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Sunday 21 July 2013 - 07:13

Yemen political prisoners - tortured under new regime

Story Code : 285269
Yemen political prisoners - tortured under new regime
Two years after the fall of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s prisons are still withholding dozens of political prisoners on the base of their political affiliation or aspirations.
 
Despite countless sit-ins and demonstrations, Yemen’s political prisoners, remain under the yoke of the new regime, condemned to wither away while politicians are arguing their fate.
 
The wave of arrest against activists and protesters started back in 2011, when the then-threated regime sought to revert to proven tactics of repression to stem the growing revolutionary movement as to regain control of the new situation and ensure that its political hegemony will remain intact.
 
While many hoped that the ouster of the regime would be immediately followed by a general amnesty and thus the release of all those who had come to denounce tyranny, newly elected President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi chose to do nothing.
 
The Protests
 
Frustrated and desperate to attract the media’s attention, prisoners announced they had begun a hunger strike on May 25 to demand that prison authorities carry out a cabinet decision issued a year ago ordering their release.
The move prompting HOOD - Yemen’s most prominent rights organization - to begin a vast campaign for their release.
 
Cabinet decision 108 of June 26, 2012, orders the release of all political prisoners detained in 2011, as well as anyone abducted that year who turned up in prisons and has never been charged. Cabinet decisions are considered binding under the law governing Yemen’s political transition.
 
As news of the hunger strike spread, the public discovered outraged that an estimated 58 activists were still in the government’s custody, with no charge filed against them, in clear violation of the law.
 
Under Yemen’s legislation no men or women can be held for more than 6 months without charge. All of Yemen’s political prisoners have been sitting in jail for over 18 months, waiting for the government to decide on their fate.
 
On June 5, President Hadi decided under much pressure to issue a decree ordering the release of 19 out of the 22 prisoners on hunger strike. This very group of prisoners were all abducted together in December 2011, as the hostilities of that year came to a close, and for eight months were unaccounted for. They resurfaced in the Political Security Organization prison in Sana’a, in August 2012. Authorities later transferred them to Sana’a Central Prison, where they remain.
 
At the time Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch issued a statement stressing, “It’s outrageous that these detainees feel compelled to go on hunger strike to get their jailers to comply with a Yemeni cabinet decision and a presidential order to free them. The attorney general and prison authorities need to carry out the president’s order to end these arbitrary detentions or be held to account.”
 
In June 3, 2013 Yemen Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashour lent her support to the movement by announcing she would in solidarity with the political prisoners join their hunger strike.
 
“I am on hunger strike and I will not stop until the imprisoned revolt youths are released,” Mashour told reporters, adding, “Their only fault was that they participated in the peaceful revolt.”
 
On the next day President Hadi convinced Minister Mashour he would take the necessary steps to arrange for the prisoners’ release, eager to break activists’ growing movement against his leadership.
 
And while indeed some prisoners have been since them release, allegations of systematic torture and harsh treatment is now emerging, leaving many to wonder whether Yemen truly broke away from its autocratic past.
 
Torture Allegations
 
Earlier this month, Zuhair al-Qurashi appeared on his relatives’ door step, disorientated and frail. He alleges he was brutally tortured by Yemen National Security forces since 2011. The Ministry of Human Rights and the office of the General Prosecutor have opened an investigation as to determine if indeed prisoners’ rights were violated.
 
Al-Qurashi testified to the following, “Armed men kidnapped me on September9, 2011 from Sana’a’s Change Square. They were affiliated with National Security and tribal sheikhs. The prison I was put in had many other revolutionaries, too.”
 
He told the Yemen Times that while in detention he and other prisoners were “lashed every night and morning, and petrol was poured on their bodies and set ablaze.”
 
He also explained that for the majority of his captivity, he was blindfolded and handcuffed in a dark cell.
 
To secure his release he said his captors forced him to sign a confession, admitting to crimes such as human organ trafficking.
 
“They threatened to kill us and our families if we revealed they tortured us [or named] our kidnappers,” he told reporters from the Yemen Times.
 
Zuhair’s broken body bears the marks of his torture.
 
In May 2013, Abdul-Malik Rajeh - a former political prisoner - also took to the press to denounce the abuse of the new regime, alleging he suffered countless acts of torture by the hands of his jailers.
 
“While I was imprisoned, I was subjected to severe beatings and torture methods such as burning. Many of the wounds still haven’t healed. They range from 4-18 centimeters long,” he told the press. He also said that his tormentors had threatened to rape him if he refused to comply and confess.
 
Marwan Al-Dawsari, the Executive Director of the Organization for Equality has said on the matter “secret abductions and mistreatment, even by intelligence agencies, is a violation of the law and are crimes that cannot be overlooked regardless of who committed them or what their positions or ranks are. They must be punished even if they try to obtain immunity from prosecution.”
 
He added, “Humans are innocent by nature, and their freedoms should not be restricted or violated except through the law. Kidnapping people for political motivations goes against our laws, Islamic Sharia, international conventions, and human rights laws and treaties ratified by Yemen.”
 
As Yemen coalition government claims to be working toward the establishment of a modern civil state, one cannot but wonder how the state can reconcile such claims with the ongoing violations which are perpetrated against its citizens.
 
For Yemen to even pretend to create a new future for itself, its officials will have to come to terms with the country’s former brutal past and breakaway from old habits as well as bring some justice to their people.
 
Without some form of closure, old recriminations will continue to fester and fuel political resentment, thus preventing the nation from moving on.
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