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.