The Yemeni detainees who were released in prisoner exchange deals recount horrific facts about the types of torture they are subjected to in the prisons of the Houthi militia intelligence, which range from fake death parties and the introduction of lunatics into cells or placing prisoners alongside criminal elements, leading to the confiscation of meals, blankets and money that they It is attended by families, where some are subjected to financial extortion and other times to harassment.
The head of the Lawyers Syndicate in Taiz Governorate, Lawyer Tawfiq al-Shaabi, tells “Al-Sharq al-Awsat” about the recently released detainees, various forms of violations against abductees and women practiced in militia prisons on a widespread and systematic basis, the most prominent of which is informing the detainee that he will be executed in the morning or threatening to bring his family in front of him to torture them in front of him. Help him if he does not respond to the demands of the torturers to admit the fabricated cases against him.
He said the detainees stay all night imagining their families in the prison, where the jailers at dawn tie their eyes and take them to a space and shoot between their feet and then order them to dig graves themselves and if the arrested person hesitates, the butts of the guns are above his head.
According to what the prison survivors said, they dug their graves, where the person descended into the grave standing at gunpoint before being shot next to him again, although one of the detainees was the militias who blew up his house and asked his family for a ransom, which happened as the family brought a type car “Hilux” and an amount of 3 million riyals, however, the militia continued to stall after taking the car and the money, and he was only released in an exchange deal with the government side.
The lawyer conveyed other forms of torture for the released, such as the prevention of eating and drinking for more than 72 hours until the detainee becomes rickety, then she cuts his hair, as well as inserting some lunatics into the cells to terrify the detainees, and the militias transfer criminal elements to the cells of some detainees who do not cooperate With the jailers, including a follower of the Jewish religion, Levi Salem Marhabi, who admitted him to extremist elements who threatened to kill him inside the cell, as was reported by one of the released followers of the Baha’i faith.
Another detainee mentions examples of practices against families who come to visit their children if they are able to find out where they are being held, and says that they are subjected to financial extortion, as militias refuse to allow visits except after payment of money, and some of them are subjected to harassment or ban, and families are often returned more than once from The entrances to the prisons, where the jailers say that they will deliver food and money to the prisoners, but it turns out that they confiscated everything and did not give the prisoners anything, especially since there are detainees who have nothing to do with the events, but unfortunately for them they fell in the way of one of the Houthi supervisors, so they are suspected, then arrested and some of them remain For years without any fault.
Another detainee recounts that the Houthi militia formed teams to lure women, and those who are difficult to lure women are fabricating a moral charge against them to blackmail her and her family. To seduce politicians and photograph them in disturbing positions to ensure that their positions are not changed, or to send others to collect information on the activities of opponents abroad. More than one girl has been arrested in different regions of Yemen, playing this role.
The Association of Mothers of Abductees in Sana’a denounced the inhumane conditions of detention in all prisons and condemned medical negligence, deprivation of blankets and winter clothes, and preventing the entry of medicine and food to the abductees and detainees. She called on the Red Cross to visit prisons and inspect the conditions of detainees there, especially sick abductees and detainees.
According to the association that follows up the cases of all detainees, more than 620 of the abducted, arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared are living in deteriorating conditions in prisons, especially with the advent of winter, which makes them vulnerable to repeated cold strikes and deprived of health care, including 507 civilians who were kidnapped, including three women, who belong to the Houthi group. All of them live in deteriorating conditions in prisons, with the intensification of the severe cold wave.
The Mothers Association stated that the people in charge of the Al-Saleh prison in Taiz, affiliated with the Houthi militia, take blankets and winter clothes from the families of the abductees, but they do not reach their families and are confiscated and nothing is provided to them. Entry of blankets to the Political Security prison in Sana’a.
The association appealed to human rights activists and human rights organizations to stand with the kidnapped, forcibly disappeared and arbitrarily detained and to support their just cause until their release and an end to their suffering.
The family of the kidnapped, Asaad Al-Wael, had appealed to save his life after his health condition deteriorated severely due to his continuous hunger strike in the Houthi intelligence prison in Ibb Governorate, and said that the 26-year-old had been on a hunger strike for 50 days in protest against his continued kidnapping and to demand his release after He was subjected to torture by the Houthi militia, which led to him suffering from pain in the spine and nervous system.
The family says that Houthi militia elements kidnapped him in early 2017, while he was returning from Sanaa to his village, where he brought preparations for his wedding, and prevented him from visiting to force him to stop his hunger strike to gain his freedom, and called on the Red Cross and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to put pressure on the militias to save his life. and release him.
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