Saudi-led coalition tortures Yemenis to death, mental illness in its secret prisons in southern Yemen
Documents revealed the killing of 23 Yemeni detainees in the secret prisons of the UAE , a main part of the Saudi-led coalition, backed by the US, in the province of Aden, under the control of UAE.
According to an annex to a letter sent by the detainees in Bir Ahmad prison to Interior Minister of the resigned Yemeni president, Hadi, Ahmed al-Misri, the detainees were killed in the prisons of Shalal, Abu al-Yamamah and Saleh al-Sayyid Waisran (pro-UAE leaders).
In another handwritten document, the detainees also identified 23 missing persons in Shalaal, Abu al-Yamamah, Yasran, Saleh al-Sayyid and Al-Khalaf prisons.
Twenty-six detainees of Hadi and al-Hirak were detained in Bir Ahmad prison, showing with their military numbers.
The detainees explained to al-Misari that they had been on hunger strike for four weeks without any response and held him responsible for what was happening to them because he was responsible for the prisoners.
International human rights and human rights organizations report numerous abuses by the UAE in Yemen, exploiting their participation in the Saudi-UAE-led coalition .
The most recent report was broadcast on Channel 4 on Friday (December 7th) and showed some of the suffering of detainees in prisons in Aden, southern Yemen, run by the United Arab Emirates.
The channel showed the testimony of Adel al-Hassani, a field commander of paid fighter forces, who was previously detained by the Abu Dhabi-backed security forces. He revealed hundreds of detainees in secret prisons in the UAE subjected to various kinds of torture: beatings, electric shocks, Sharp metal in sensitive areas of the body. ”
He added in the investigation, which included statements to human rights organizations and pictures from inside prisons: “The prisons were filled with screaming every night because of torture, which is supervised by Emiratis”.
In its report entitled “God alone knows if it is alive,” the organization said it has monitored dozens of arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and torture by pro-UAE forces.
Amnesty International considered these practices tantamount to war crimes and called on the UAE to stop participating in them and to launch a rapid and effective investigation into them.
Among the figures mentioned in the report, Amnesty said that it investigated the conditions of the arrest of 51 prisoners between March 2016 and May 2018, arrested by paid fighter forces and UAE forces, and confirmed that 19 people lost .
The Associated Press of America revealed several months ago in a press investigation for secret prisons run by the UAE using worst forms of physical, psychological and sexual torture against the Yemenis detainees in the southern provinces.
Earlier, military officials of the authority of Hadi affirmed that all prisons in the southern provinces are official prisons run by the government, denying any presence of the UAE-run any secret prisons or places of torture run by the UAE forces.
The United Arab Emirates forces , for its part, released 11 detainees from UAE-run Bir Ahmed Prison in Aden province after more than two years of forced detention and concealment, local sources told YemenExtra.
According to the sources, two of those released are mentally ill as a result of being subjected to torture in the non-expendable prisons.This comes after media pressure exercised by activists in the southern region.
Aden security chief Shallal Shaye, who was appointed by Hadi administration,loyal to the coalition, confirmed that detainees in a UAE-run prison have been jailed illegally by Emirati-backed paid fighters in the city.Speaking to the Abu Dhabi news channel about the situation of the Bir Ahmed prison, Shaya admitted that there were prisoners on hunger strike as a result of their illegal imprisonment.“The prisoners’ files were recently filed with the proper authorities and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and these confirm that the prisoners were imprisoned outside the law and order,” he said.
Many protest rallies staged by dozens of mothers of detainees and prisoners in the secret jails run.At the rallies, the protesters demanded release of their sons from UAE secret prisons.The protesters raised slogans and banners condemning the torture operations against the southern people in the prisons, calling to close that the prisons.
In March 2015, the US -backed –Saudi-led coalition started a war against Yemen with the declared aim of crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement, who had taken over from the staunch Riyadh ally and fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, while also seeking to secure the Saudi border with its southern neighbor. Three years and over 600,000 dead and injured Yemeni people and prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country, the war has yielded little to that effect.
Despite the coalition claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.
However, Saudi Arabia relies heavily on the US in its brutal war on Yemen. Washington has deployed a commando force on the Arab kingdom’s border with Yemen to help destroy arms belonging to Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement. Washington has also provided logistical support and aerial refueling.