Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi

Biography

Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi was born in 1945 in Abyan in southern Yemen. He graduated from a military academy in the Federation of South Arabia in 1966, later studied armoured warfare in Egypt and spent four years at military schools in the Soviet Union, and rose to major general in the army of South Yemen.

He sided with President Ali Nasser Mohammed in South Yemen's 1986 civil war and followed him into exile in the North. During the 1994 civil war in unified Yemen he backed Ali Abdullah Saleh, who made him defence minister and then, in October 1994, vice president, a post he kept for eighteen years.

During the 2011 uprising he stood in as acting president while Saleh was treated in Saudi Arabia, and again after Saleh agreed to step aside. As the only candidate in the February 2012 election he became president for a transition that included a National Dialogue Conference on a federal constitution. After the Houthis took Sanaa in 2014 they forced his resignation in January 2015 and held him under house arrest.

Hadi escaped to Aden, withdrew his resignation and moved to Riyadh as a Saudi-led coalition intervened on his side. He remained the internationally recognized president until April 2022, when he handed his powers to a Presidential Leadership Council. He died in Riyadh in May 2026.