By: Zuhur al-Yemeni

The Yemeni Islah Party is a civil political party that transcends sectarianism, tribalism and sectarianism, and it has the greatest success in spreading centrist thought and the societal, educational, intellectual and political incubator of the Yemeni people, while the Houthis are nothing but an exclusionary sectarian group, where the process of exclusion in this group reached the ranks of the dynasty itself, which fuels conflict within it, and it rejects any political party with a national republican project.

Since the first day of their coup against power, the Houthi has worked to remove the Islah Party from their way, bulldoze the political process, eliminate political pluralism, strike political stability and spread dark and priestly ideas related to the myth of selection and the sacred divine right of a family that claims that God has delegated it to rule the world and speak in the name of God!!

The Houthi terrorist militia has imprisoned thousands of the Party's cadres, including dozens of leaders, in its secret prisons in the capital, Sana'a, and the Governorates under its control, until the Party's leaders and members were among the dead, arrested and pursued.

122 abductees from the Islah Party within a week:

The crime of abducting opponents was created and grew up in the arms of the Houthi militia. Within a few days of these militias' domination of the Yemeni scene, the abduction of Islah Party members became a daily phenomenon, growing hysterically and expanding in the areas controlled by the militias.

And against the background of these crimes, reports stated at the time that in the first week of April 2015, the Houthis abducted 122 leaders, members and activists of the Islah Party.

And on April 2, the militias abducted a member of the Supreme Authority of the Yemeni Islah Party, Sheikh Muhammad Hassan Dammaj and his son Al-Hussein from their home. At the time, a report issued by Amnesty International stated that Dammaj's son said that his father called him on April 18 and told him that he was being held in an arms depot in Noqum Mountain, which is being attacked by airstrikes by Arab Alliance countries.

And on April 3, the head of the Islah Party's Political Department in Ibb Governorate, Amin Naji al-Rajawi, may God have mercy on him, was abducted after he was summoned to the Ibb Governorate security department under the pretext of discussing some problems that concern the Governorate and was abducted upon his arrival.

And on May 21, al-Rajawi was killed in a Houthi detention center after they used him as a human shield in an airstrike by the Arab Alliance forces in Harran Mountain, Dhamar Governorate, in the seismic monitoring center.

And on April 4, Houthi gunmen abducted Muhammad Qahtan, the representative of the Islah Party in the dialogues that were taking place between the political forces and the Houthis under the supervision of the UN envoy, Jamal Benomar, at the Sahool checkpoint in Ibb Governorate, while on his way to Aden to meet President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and he was forcibly disappeared and his fate is still unknown to this day, and he suffers from the inferno of injustice and is scorched by the flames of sorrow in the dungeons of the Houthi militia.

On the same day, a member of the General Secretariat, Abdul Jalil Saeed al-Himyari, was abducted.

And on April 5, the militias abducted a member of the Supreme Authority of the Yemeni Islah Party, Sheikh Hamoud Hashem al-Tharihi, may God have mercy on him, as well as the head of the Department of Information and Culture Fathi al-Azab, parliamentarian Ahmed Sharaf al-Din, parliamentarian Ali al-Ansi, Secretary of the Executive Office of the Islah Party in Hodeidah Governorate Muhammad al-Daghbashi, and a leader in the party Al-Islah Muhammad al-Sharabi, Ali Ziyad, Qasim al-Qamous, the Secretary-General of the Islah Party in Sana’a Governorate Abdul Karim Musalli, and the head of the Shura Council of the Party in the Dhamar Governorate, the late Hassan al-Yaairi, who was assassinated by the Houthis months after his release from prison.

In addition, on the same day, dozens of Islah Party's youth were abducted in the Capital Municipality, Sana'a Governorate and Amran Governorate, and some of them are still forcibly disappeared until writing this report.

Here, it should be noted that Yemeni law criminalizes even the competent authorities in the state to arrest or detain any person, except in flagrante delicto or under the direction of the judge or the Public Prosecution.

Article (1) of Law No. (24) of 1998 stipulates the death penalty for anyone who leads an abduction gang and imprisonment for a period of no less than 12 years and not more than 15 years for anyone who abducted a person and if the abducting process is accompanied by or followed by abuse or assault, the penalty is imprisonment for a period not exceeding 25 years, all without prejudice to retribution, blood money or compensation, as the case may be, if the harm resulted in what necessitates that as stipulated in Article (2) of the same law.

Raids and stormings of one day:

As for the storming and looting of homes and headquarters of the Islah Party, this is another story told by the numbers reported by human rights reports.

According to the Sana’a Rights Center, in its first report at the time, it stated that the Houthi militia committed 159 violations within 24 hours in Sana’a (April 2015), where the abductions amounted to 122 leaders, members and activists affiliated with the Islah Party, in addition to 17 homes and nine headquarters of the Islah Party were raided and five civil society organizations and six student housing were looted.

And according to the report, the house of the head of the Supreme Authority of the Yemeni Islah Party, Mr Muhammad al-Yadumi, was raided and his son Suhaib was abducted, and the house of a member of the Supreme Authority, Sheikh Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, was raided and militias were stationed in, as well as the house of Mr Abdul Wahab al-Anisi, the house of the head of the Parliamentary Bloc of the Islah Party, Zaid al-Shami, the house of the head of the Party’s Education Department, Dr. Abdul-Wahab al-Dailami, and the house of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Awqaf, head of the political department in the Executive Office, Muhammad al-Ashwal and they abducted his bodyguards.

The report also stated that on the same day, militias stormed the house of parliamentary representative and head of the Party’s Social Department, Abdullah Sa'tar, the house of a member of the Party’s Supreme Authority Sheikh Hamoud Hashem al-Tharhi, and the house of the head of the Party’s Shura Council in Dhamar Governorate, Hassan al-Ya'iri, and the house of the head of the Legal Department in the Islah Party, Muhammad Naji Allaw, was also stormed, and abducting seven people were present in the house, and the homes of a number of parliamentarians and dozens of Party members and supporters were also raided.

The Sana’a Rights Center stated that student housings for the Islah Party were stormed, including Taiba housing, University of Science housing (1), Science University housing (2), Science University housing (3), Science University housing (4) and Science University housing (5).

The Party’s headquarters were also stormed and seized after the arrest of all those present in, as the Executive Office of the Islah Party was stormed in the Capital Municipality, the Party’s headquarters in Old Sana’a, the headquarters of Branch 5 and 7, the headquarters of the Islah Party in constituencies 12, 13, 14, 19 and four headquarters of the Party in Ma'in Directorate.

The Islah Institute on Sixtieth Street in Sana'a and the Party's Students Union headquarters in the College of Education on Ribat Street was also stormed.

The Islah Party paid a heavy price for its support for legitimacy:

The Islah Party’s positions in all political stations of Yemen were clear in support of constitutional legitimacy, as it is the umbrella on which Yemenis agree with all their intellectual, political and social orientations. Therefore, the party was at the forefront of Yemeni society, which paid a heavy price as a result of the Houthi coup against power and a number of its cadres are still in the militias' prison cells, being subjected to the most horrific forms of torture, including the displaced and pursued outside their areas and homeland.

A Prof. Dr. at the Faculty of Arts at Sana'a University (A. D) talked about this subject, saying: "Although the great goal of the coup was to attack the republican regime in the main, but the declaration by the coup perpetrators that the Islah Party was their enemy was only one of the overt coverage of the clear and explicit goal of the coup in overthrowing the state, the republic and restoring the rule of the Imamate in all its political and cultural dimensions. Therefore, the support of the Yemeni Islah Party and its alignment behind the legitimacy in the face of the coup of the Houthi militia and its dreamy project of the return of the Imamate and turning Yemen into a mere follower of the Iranian project was not a passing position devoid of repercussions."

He added: “The Islah Party has found itself in the center of a battle with its back exposed since the moment of the first coup. It is true that the Islah Party was able to avoid being dragged into a battle outside the boundaries of its party and civil function, but the fall of the whole of Yemen into the hands of the perpetrators of the coup did not leave the Islah Party with no choice but to return to the forefront of the Yemeni resistance scene again, so the Islah Party took the initiative to support the decision of the Al-Hazm Storm among all political forces participating in the legitimate government, and the Islah Party found itself at the center of the fateful battle, not for Yemen alone, but for the entire region, so it threw all its weight into the heart of a great and fateful national battle in which the Islah Party's youth on the fronts bore the largest share of it in resisting the coup.

He added: "The Islah party and its leadership have realized that liberation and restoring Yemen and its state will have a heavy price, so many of them offered their lives cheap for the sake of the homeland and the freedom and dignity of the Yemeni people, so they drew the battle to liberate Yemen with the blood of leaders of various levels and confront the remnants of the imamate and the crime and terrorism it produced, which exceeded all perceptions.