A coup-run court has sentenced to death Yahya Al-Jubaihi, a journalist who was abducted from his house in Sanaa, Yemen last September, said the Saudi news agency SPA.

Yemeni sources said the court ruled to execute Jubaihi, for fabricated and forged accusations.

“The ruling was sudden and unexpected,” the sources said.

Jubaihi was not previously offered a hearing or given the right to appoint a lawyer, the sources added.

Jubaihi is a member of the Arab journalists union and the Yemeni journalists trade union and works as lecturer at the Faculty of Information, University of Sana’a. In the 80s, he served as freelancer and appointed as media counselor at the Yemeni cabinet secretariat general.

In 2015, Iran-allied Houthis staged a nationwide coup to topple the internationally recognized government headed by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Serving a foreign expansionist agenda, Houthi forces controlling the capital Sana’a and allied with forces loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh have clashed with forces loyal to the government of Hadi, based in Aden.

After taking over Sana’a, the Houthi-led Supreme Revolutionary Committee declared a general mobilization to overthrow Hadi and further their control by driving into southern provinces.

Terror group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and ISIS have also carried out attacks, with AQAP controlling swathes of territory in the hinterlands, and along stretches of the coast.

The civil conflict has escalated so that over 21 million people, or around 80 percent of Yemen’s population, are in need of humanitarian aid, the United Nations says.