Yemen has arrested members of a spy ring that was led by a former commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the state SABA news agency said on Wednesday, as the country's president told Tehran to butt out of its internal affairs.
In a series of SMS messages, SABA said the spy cell had operated in Yemen as well as in the Horn of Africa and that it had kept an operations centre in Sanaa, Yemen's capital. An Interior Ministry official said all those detained were Yemenis.
In an apparent reference to the incident, President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi called on Iran to stay out of Yemen's affairs.
"We hope that our brothers in Iran won't interfere in Yemen's affairs and that they take into consideration the sensitive situation in Yemen," Hadi said. "Leave Yemen alone, enough is enough."