A court in the Yemeni capital Sana’a has handed down the death penalty to four Saudi nationals convicted of belonging to the al-Qaeda terrorist group and decapitating 14 Yemeni troops some three years ago.

According to the Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, the Specialized Criminal Court said that the convicts had been members of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) terror group and had beheaded 14 army soldiers of the 135th Brigade following an attack against a state security center in the city of Say'un in Yemen’s Hadhramaut region back in August 2014.

Judge Mohammad Mofleh further ordered for the Saudi convicts to be executed in public and in the presence of the families of those killed, the report added.

The AQAP was established through the merger of the Saudi and Yemeni wings of the Takfiri terrorist al-Qaeda organization in 2009, and since then it has been responsible for numerous attacks on Yemeni army personnel, particularly in the period preceding Saudi Arabia’s full-scale war against Yemen in March 2015.

Since the beginning of the Saudi war on Yemen, which was carried out in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall the former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, Saudi warplanes have pounded the nation day and night, killing over 12,000 people, including many women and children, and displacing over three million others.

The Yemen war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

Furthermore, the chaos created by the Saudi war has given an advantage to the AQAP and Daesh Takfiri terrorist group to secure a foothold in the Arab nation.

The humanitarian situation in Yemen has also dramatically deteriorated amid a Saudi blockade, which has put the impoverished country on the brink of widespread famine.