Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi

Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi (Arabic: حسين بدر الدين الحوثي;‎ 1956 – 10 September 2004), also spelled Hussein Badr Eddin al-Houthi, was a Zaidi religious leader and former member of the Yemeni parliament for the Al-Haqq Islamic party between 1993 and 1997. He was instrumental in the Houthi insurgency against the Yemeni government, which began in 2004. al-Houthi, who was a one-time rising political aspirant in Yemen, had wide religious and tribal backing in northern Yemen's mountainous regions. The Houthi movement took his name after his death in 2004.

Personal life

Al-Houthi was born in 1956 in the Marran area of Sada'a region. His father, Badr al-Din al-Tabatabai, was a prominent Zaydi cleric who briefly took control of the Houthi movement following his son's death.

According to an al-Houthi disciple, he had lived part of his life with his family (including his father and younger brother Abd al-Malik) in Qom, Iran. He claimed also that al-Houthi's relationship with Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, and Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader .