Rights group: 208 secret prisons in Yemen run by UAE’s backed forces

SAM Organisation for Rights and Liberties said that parties to the conflict in Yemen are detaining civilians in illegal prisons, at many Yemeni territories, that lack minimum legal conditions and humanitarian standards, as well as judicial oversight, thereby exacerbating the sufferings of the arbitrarily detained civilians.

SAM has documented more than 208 illegal detention centres and prisons managed by armed factions allied with the UAE.

 Different sources, including victims and eyewitnesses, confirmed that detainees are subjected to physical and psychological torture, and were denied their basic rights as granted by international laws.

Abi Al-Abbas, UAE backed group, seized many police stations and turned them into detention centres, including Bab Musa, Al-Bab AL-Kabeer police stations, and Hail girls’ school, which are not supervised by the army or security administration in the governorate, the organisation clarified.

With the arrival of the UAE backed Security Belt forces to Mocha, SAM organization monitored establishment of many informal prisons and detention centres where detainees were subjected to torture, including CAC bank building, under the leadership of Thi Yazan al-Yafe’e, Mocha elementary court, in Mocha, affiliated to the emergency forces battalion commanded  by Najeeb Seif Al-Yafe’e, Ice Factory detention centre affiliated to the 4th battalion commanded  by Raed Al-Yafe’e, and all these detention centres practice torture against civilian detainees, and detain them without any legal justifications or procedures.

SAM Organization called on the UAE to commit to the international human rights conventions and to consider these detention centres as violation to the international law, and consider such practices against abducted civilians as “crimes against humanity”.

Sam