The number of victims is increasing between death prisons controlled by the Houthi militia in the north of the country and the Transitional Council militia in the south, the prisons of the two militias are filled with thousands of people who have been abducted and forcibly disappeared.

They are famous prisons, such as the central prisons and the police stations that are run by these two militias, in addition to other secret prisons. The release of any prisoner from these prisons is rare, and the lucky person is the one who gets out of these prisons in good health and free from any injuries or permanent disability as a result of torture. Of course, there are those who bring out a dead body, which is the fate that frightens the families of the kidnapped.

Prisons and those in charge of them are diverse, and their victims and the torture they are subjected to are similar, as hundreds of prisoners come out as lifeless corpses as a result of the brutal torture they endured inside those prisons described as “death prisons”. The person who does not die by torture dies of oppression because of the bad things he was subjected to inside those lonely bars.

Torture to death:

Last Saturday, the abducted person, Muhammad Jamal Ahmed Saleh, died in a prison under the control of the Southern Transitional Council, in Lahj Governorate, days after his abduction, and this came two weeks after the death of the prisoner Sami al-Watiri under torture inside the central prison of the Houthi militia in Sana'a.

In Lahj, the victim, the brother of the abducted, said that his brother - a father of three children - was abducted from his workplace in the air-conditioning maintenance workshop in the city of Al-Huta, the capital of Lahj Governorate, and after three days his family was informed that he had died and his body was transferred to morgue of the Ibn Khaldun hospital in Lahj.

In Sana'a, the prisoner Sami al-Watiri died as a result of brutal torture he was subjected to at the hands of the Houthi commander, nicknamed Abu Shihab al-Murtada, who is the brother of the commander in the militia, Abdul Qadir al-Murtada, who was appointed as the head of the so-called Houthi Prisoners Committee.

According to the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms, al-Watiri was brutally tortured and died of his injuries. Where al-Watiri had bruises on his chest as a result of the torture he was subjected to with other prisoners. After his death, he was transferred to an unknown location before his death was announced as a result of what he was exposed to in the Houthi death prisons.

Liquidation of the abducted:

In the middle of last June, the abducted Ahmed Ali Saleh Ruzaiq, 35 years old, was subjected to physical liquidation inside the prisons of the Houthi militia, days after he was abducted from inside the farm of one of his neighbors in his village, Beit Al-Nujaif, Wadi Al-Sir area in the Bani Hushaish Directorate - Sana'a Governorate.

According to the Shohood Organization for Human Rights, the young man, Ruzaiq, had been abducted by the Houthi militia and transferred to one of its secret prisons. The militia prevented him from any form of communication with his family, who were surprised to inform them that they had to come to Hospital 48 to receive his body, where Ruzaiq died three days before informing them so that it became clear later the extent of torture that the abductees are subjected to in the militia's prisons.

In the middle of last month, the abducted Mohammad Hassan Mahdi also died inside the prisons of the Southern Transitional Council in Abyan Governorate, after he was subjected to severe torture that affected his entire body. This came after his arrest while he was traveling to spend the Eid al-Adha holiday with his family in the Hazm al-Adain Directorate, west of the city of Ibb.

At the end of last December, the young man Hilmy Ahmed al-Najdi died under torture at the hands of the Southern Transitional Council forces in Abyan Governorate, in the south of the country. This came after he was abducted from the village of Najd in the Lawdar Directorate and put in one of its prisons before this militia delivered his body to the Directorate hospital without notifying his family.

According to human rights reports, the young man was subjected to brutal torture, as activists on social media circulated pictures showing the body of the young Najdi showing signs of brutal torture that led to his death, thus adding to the list of victims of militia abuse in the north and south of the country.

An open-ended list:

These victims, who were mentioned - to name just a few - are included in the list of more than 350 abductees who died under torture in the prisons of the Houthi militia, including 33 women, according to the Yemeni government.

In a statement it issued in the middle of last year, the Ministry of Human Rights said that it had monitored 1,635 cases of torture that took place in Houthi prisons during the past two years and that more than 350 cases were killed under torture, including 33 abducted women who were tortured to death.

The Ministry indicated that a number of abductees died as a result of negligence and the deterioration of their health in light of the continuous denial of receiving treatment, and others were subjected to physical liquidation inside militia prisons. The Ministry has confirmed that these crimes do not fall under the statute of limitations and that those who committed these crimes will receive a just punishment. At the same time, the Ministry holds the rebel Houthi militia fully responsible for the life and health of all prisoners in its prisons and detention centers.

This comes at a time when human rights and educational sources revealed that the number of educators who died under torture in the prisons of the terrorist Houthi militia in the period from September 21, 2014, to November 2020, amounted to about 22 educators.

According to what was stated by the media official of the Yemeni Teachers Syndicate, Yahya al-Yanaei, the category of teachers ranked first among the groups targeted by torture to death at the hands of Houthi elements, with a rate of 16% of the total number of deaths under torture in Yemen, amounting to 137 cases.

Crimes with no statute of limitation:

With the increasing number of victims in militia prisons, observers believe that the continued unjustified international silence towards these crimes means that more violations and crimes will be committed against innocent civilians. These observers call on the international community to play its legal and moral role in exerting more pressure on the militias in order to stop their multiple violations against civilians.

And human rights defenders assert that these crimes are considered a violation of human rights, a violation of all constitutional and legal texts, and a contradiction with international agreements and treaties that require the accountability of the violating party and subject them to legal accountability in any place and time, because such crimes are considered crimes that do not fall under the statute of limitations even if The owner of the right waived his personal right.

According to the Yemeni constitution and international law, torture is a crime against humanity. The Yemeni constitution not only prohibited torture, but went to "prohibit all types of torture, whether physical, psychological or moral, but also prohibited what is less than that, such as forced confession, inhumane treatment, whether during the process of detention, imprisonment or interrogation. This was expressly stipulated in Paragraph (b) of Article (47) of the Yemeni constitution.

Also, the Yemeni constitution stipulates that “every person who practices, orders or participates in torture must be punished in accordance with the provisions of Paragraph (e) of Article (47) of the Yemeni constitution, and on the grounds that torture is a crime for which there is no statute of limitations”

The inaction of the United Nations' position:

It seems that the international position is still failing and has not yet risen to the level of the event in dealing with such heinous crimes that are increasing day after day, especially in light of the repeated Yemeni human rights appeals to the international community to intervene to stop these grave violations of the abductees in militia prisons.

In a previous statement issued by it, the Abductees' Mothers Association had confirmed, "The abductees' mothers lose their sons continuously after they were abducted and tortured to death, without intervening of the human conscience, human rights organizations, and the parties to the conflict in Yemen in these crimes against humanity."

The Abductees' Mothers Association also held the Houthi militia responsible for these crimes, calling at the same time on the Security Council to impose sanctions targeting those responsible for the crimes of disappearance and torture and to exert pressure to release all abductees and forcibly disappeared persons without any conditions.

For its part, Rights Radar called for stopping all methods of psychological and physical torture that are committed in prisons and detention centers, because this is considered a violation of national laws and international law and a violation of international covenants and treaties related to human rights, to which the Republic of Yemen is a party.

International and local organizations called for interacting with reports of human rights violations in Yemen, monitoring and documenting them, and working hard to work to reduce this, in addition to coordinating among themselves to document cases of violations in Yemen and report them to the highest international and national levels.