Sana’a: A Yemeni Jewish rabbi demanded that the British government not give asylum to Yemeni Jews who want to leave their country because of 'alleged persecution'.

"The attempts to take the Jews from Yemen are attempts to portray Yemen as a country without tolerance," Rabbi, Yahya Yousif, told Gulf News on Monday.

“I do not agree with Jewish brothers, who allow others to distort our homeland,” he added.

This comes after press reports that Britain would give political asylum to a group of Yemeni Jews who applied after they complained of alleged persecution in their country, Yemen.

"I have information that a group of Jews in Raidah have the desire to leave Yemen for Britain, but I think this is not justifiable," the rabbi said.

"This is our homeland, homeland of our great-grandparents.  We are fine here, secured, and our rights are given."

The rabbi, Yahya Yousif, along with a group of about 70 Jews, have been living in a relatively luxurious government-run residential compound in the Yemeni capital Sana'a since 2006 when Al Houthi rebels forced them to leave their houses in Al Salem in Sa'ada, north of the country.

There are about 260 Jews still living in the most tribal and conservative province of Amran, town of Raidah, about 50 km north of the capital Sana'a.

The Yemeni government has been promising to transfer them to the capital Sana’a like the group from Al Salem, especially after one of them was killed by a religious extremist who asked them to convert to Islam or leave Yemen.

The killer was sentenced to death.

It seems the government does not want to put them in one place in Sana’a in fear of becoming an easy target for religious extremists.

The Jews in Raidah complain to journalists and human rights groups of individual harassments and persecution, but they can not leave their homes and lands and go to Sana’a, because they find it difficult to sell their homes.

“We want to move to Sana’a like our brothers from Al Salem, but we want compensation for our houses and lands first, the government kept promising us, but nothing happened,” one of the Jews in Raidah told Gulf News.

“If our problem is not solved, we’ll go to the hell not only to Israel or Britain,” a Jewish man said, asking not to be named.

A diplomat from the UK embassy in Sana'a could not confirm or deny if asylum was granted to them.