Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi

On 5 June 2013, tens of thousands of Yemeni Shias attended the reburial of the remains of al-Houthi in Sa'dah, where armed rebels were deployed in large numbers. The new Yemeni government had turned over his remains to his family on 28 December 2012 as a goodwill gesture to bolster national reconciliation talks. The previous government of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had stepped down in 2012 after the Yemeni Revolution, originally buried al-Houthi in 2004 at the Sana'a central prison to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine for the Zaidis. A representative of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi attended the funeral, but a Houthi spokesman accused the central government of refusing to give visas to several dignitaries who wanted to travel to Yemen to attend the ceremony and of tearing down pictures of al-Houthi put up in the Yemeni capital.

On 18 June 2004, Yemeni police arrested 640 of his followers, who were demonstrating in front of the Great Mosque of Sana'a. Two days later the Yemeni government offered a bounty of $55,000 for his capture, launching an operation aimed at ending his alleged rebellion.

Al-Houthi founded the Believing Youth movement (Arabic: شباب المؤمنین ‎) in 1990 or 1992 to teach young persons about Zaidi and its history to revive Zaidism in Saada Governorate.

Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi (Arabic: حسين بدر الدين الحوثي ‎;‎ 20 August 1959 – 10 September 2004), also spelled Hussein Badr Eddin al-Houthi, was a Zaidi religious, political and military leader, as well as former member of the Yemeni parliament for the Al-Haqq 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 assassination in 2004.

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