Prisoners Affairs: US-Saudi Aggression Obstructs Implementation of Signed Prisoners Swap Deals

The forces of the US-Saudi aggression and its mercenaries are obstructing the implementation of the agreements signed regarding the exchange of prisoners in light of the inability of the United Nations to move this humanitarian issue, the Head of the National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs Abdulqadir Al-Murtadha confirmed on Sunday.

“A full year has passed since the implementation of the first and last prisoner exchange deal under the auspices of the United Nations,” Al-Murtada wrote in a post published on his Twitter page. “After that we were unable to implement any new deal due to the obstruction of the forces of aggression and its mercenaries from implementing the rest of the signed agreements, in addition to the clear UN inability to move this humanitarian issue.”

In the face of the obstacles that the aggression places in the way of implementing prisoner exchange agreements, including those carried out under the auspices of the United Nations, the Prisoners’ Affairs Committee seeks exchanges through local mediation, but the aggression is trying to close this door as well.

The mercenaries of the aggression had received strict Saudi directives to prevent local exchanges since March, and as a result, the National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs was only able to carry out some individual exchanges.

Last June, the Head of the National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs revealed new Saudi directives to mercenaries to stop all locally agreed exchanges. He explained that the Saudi directives to its mercenaries led to the suspension of seven prisoner swap deals on several fronts, including 400 prisoners from both sides.

After a period of delay, the forces of aggression carried out in mid-October 2020 a swap deal that included hundreds of prisoners from both sides under an agreement signed after negotiations hosted by Switzerland.

A Saudi-led coalition, which receives arms and intelligence from Western countries, waged war against Yemen in March 2015 to restore power to the country’s Riyadh-friendly former officials. The war and a simultaneous siege that the US-Saudi-led coalition has been enforcing on the country has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis.

The invasion has pushed entire Yemen close to the brink of outright famine, turning the country into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

A UN-backed agreement, which has been reached between the warring sides during a round of UN-sponsored peace negotiations in Sweden in December 2018, could not commit to release all for all prisoners.