The dissidents had alleged that AQAP wrongly killed some of its own members after they were accused of being spies. AQAP denies the men were innocent, claiming they went through a “fair trial”. Says its has a “judiciary” that is “qualified” and “independent”.

AQAP accuses one of the dissidents of being opportunistic by only raising his concerns after being sacked as a commander for derelict of duty. All three rebels are accused of treachery for revealing AQAP secrets after they had published internal correspondence about the dispute.

AQAP also denies it stopped the dissidents from seeking religious arbitration or raising the dispute to al-Qaeda’s top leader al-Zawahiri. Says the men failed to abide by an agreement to submit a list of grievances to be forwarded to Zawahiri.

To prove it’s points, AQAP published parts of the correspondence between the two disputing camps within the group.

AQAP has been grappling with the problem of infiltration for years, with spies being blamed for the deaths of several key AQAP figures, including former leader al-Raymi. Now, it’s facing a major split over its handling of the war on spies.

AQAP’s new leader Batarfi has been appearing in a new Ramadan video series, focussing on the Qur’an chapters of al-Nur and al-Hujurat that deal with several topics including spying. He doesn’t explicitly comment on the internal feud rocking his group. But he hints at it.

Batarfi said he chose Surat al-Nur and al-Hujarat for his new series because they deal with correct code of conduct during a crisis. He clearly had in mind the dissidents who went public and made “baseless” accusations.

The revelations of a major strife within AQAP comes days after the Yemen branch of #Isis released a lengthy “documentary” video discrediting al-Qaeda and its Yemen affiliate AQAP. In the video, Isis urged AQAP dissidents to defect https://twitter.com/abdirahims/status/1257712091701620737

Full report https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c201pbgi