News - Yemen: Yemen’s Interior Ministry today released detailed confessions from a cell of the foreign espionage network linked to the US, the Zionist entity, and Saudi intelligence, revealing how operatives were recruited and tasked with sabotaging national security. 

The ministry broadcast recorded admissions by the spy Bashir Ali Mahdi, who described step‑by‑step recruitment, training abroad, and the use of development projects as a cover to collect sensitive intelligence. 

According to the confessions, Mahdi was recruited in two phases: an initial cultural and social‑work role through the establishment of the purported NGO “Qudra” and involvement with Dar Al‑Salam in 2018–2019, followed by militarily oriented tasks after travel to Cairo in 2023.

He names a US‑linked operator, identified in the recordings as “Rebecca Cataldi,” who coordinated training and operational directives through an outfit called the International Center for Religions and Diplomacy (ICRD). 

Mahdi admits that, together with an associate named Nasser Al‑Sheibah, he surveyed and collected information on more than 70 targets — homes, government offices, hangars and media facilities — and passed coordinates and intelligence to handlers abroad.

The confessions say the espionage activity was conducted under the cover of “sustainable development” projects to mask surveillance and to recruit inside executive offices using training programs as a pretext. 

The Interior Ministry says this disclosure is part of Operation Their Plot Will Fail, a wider counter‑intelligence campaign that has uncovered a multi‑tiered spy network  coordinated by a joint operations room involving the CIA, Israeli and Saudi intelligence services. Authorities contend the network used humanitarian and development initiatives as covert channels to penetrate state institutions and collect strategic military and economic data. 

Mahdi — a 43‑year‑old physics graduate from Sana’a University (class of 2006) — was arrested on March 20, 2025, and the Interior Ministry says evidence ties his Qudra projects to intelligence‑gathering, recruitment, and operational support for hostile foreign services. The ministry says further disclosures and video statements from other cell members will follow as investigations continue.