US mercenary 'was paid millions to carry out killings for UAE in Yemen'
A former US special forces commando made millions of dollars carrying out assassinations for the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, according to court documents.
The documents were cited in a report by the New York Post (NY Post) published on Thursday.
Abraham Golan, a mercenary who was allegedly behind the attempted assassination of Anssaf Ali Mayo, was named as a defendant by the Yemeni lawmaker who narrowly avoided death.
Golan and Isaac Gilmore, a former Navy Seal, founded Spear Operations Group in August 2015.
They pitched and secured a deal with the UAE to carry out “targeted assassinations” on the Emirates' behalf, according to the lawsuit cited by the NY Post.
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In return, Spear would reportedly be paid $1.5m a month plus bonuses for successful assassinations.
“There was a targeted assassination program in Yemen. I was running it. We did it. It was sanctioned by the UAE within the coalition,” Golan allegedly said, according to the court documents.
The deal between Spear and the UAE was struck in Abu Dhabi during a meeting that the NY Post reported included Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled former Palestinian politician who has since become an adviser to UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
A photograph of Gilmore, Golan and Dahlan was published by Buzzfeed in 2018.
Once the deal was made, Golan and Gilmore recruited former military personnel, including Dale Comstock, a former member of the US Army Special Forces, who was reportedly paid $40,000 a month plus bonuses to run the killing team.
Earlier investigations revealed wider campaign
An investigation by Buzzfeed revealed that the UAE had hired mercenaries to assassinate prominent members of al-Islah, the Yemeni branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
That report included leaked drone footage of a failed attempt in December 2015 to kill al-Islah's Mayo and everyone in his office.
In a BBC documentary aired in 2024, Gilmore admitted that Mayo was among the names on a "kill list".
Mayo has since said he suffers “psychological and emotional trauma” from the killing attempt, and now lives in exile in Saudi Arabia. His wife and two children remain in Yemen.
According to the NY Post, Golan plotted assassinations for the UAE from a huge $7m mansion in San Diego.
The lawsuit states Golan told Comstock that Spear had been hired by the UAE to carry out killings on its behalf.
The attempted assassination of Mayo began a spate of targeted killings in Yemen between 2015 and 2018, during which time human rights organisation Reprieve investigated 160 killings.
Reprieve found that only 23 of those killed had links to terror organisations.
"The UAE is willing to destroy the whole country and bring mercenaries from around the world to annihilate al-Islah," Mohammed Abdulwadood, a member of the party in Taiz, told Middle East Eye in 2018. "The UAE is cunning, but God does not help the cunning to succeed."
The UAE government has denied targeting individuals not connected to terrorism, and said its counter-terrorism activities were conducted at the invitation of Yemen’s internationally recognised government.
A BBC investigation found that, in addition to US mercenaries, the UAE recruited former al-Qaeda members to provide security in Yemen.
A whistleblower told the BBC that former members of the militant group, which has long had a presence in south Yemen, were hired to work with the UAE-aligned Southern Transitional Council (STC) in a security capacity.
The whistleblower provided the names of 11 former al-Qaeda members allegedly working with the STC.
The STC at the time denied the claims of al-Qaeda involvement in its military forces.
The UAE and al-Islah had previously been on the same side in Yemen's war since 2015, fighting against the Houthi movement, officially known as Ansar Allah.
However, the relationship soured considerably. In October 2017, clashes broke out in Aden between al-Islah's and Emirati proxy militias.
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