STC militia kidnap 8 citizens from Dhamar province
ADEN, Sept. 29 (YPA) – The UAE-Backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) militias have abducted eight citizens from Dhamar province who were working in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden.
On Friday night, October 16, 2020, STC militias aboard two military pickup vehicles broke into the house of Abdullah Ali Yahya al-Hayyi, a resident of Inma’a city in Aden province, and arrested all those in the house, including women and children, and all workers who used to sell the qat herb, from his tribe Anas-Dhamar, according to testimony of the detainees’ relatives.
“They beat my husband, insulted and tortured him and all those with him on charges that they are loyal to Ansarullah, and then beat me with a stick and threatened my husband that they would hurt me in front of his eyes, in order to force him to confess. This led my husband to say that he will confess what they want in exchange for my release,” Nabila, a woman who escaped, said.
Hanan, Ahmed Hussein al-Jaashmi’s wife, confirmed that she had been threatened with rape by the STC, which prompted her husband to confess to their allegations in order to save her.
“Then they let us go, and one of the soldiers drove us home with his black car and he told us: “I advise you to leave Aden as soon as possible. Go back to your country Dhamar. So we left Aden and went back to Dhamar,” she said.
Till this moment, the eight detainees are still being held in secret prisons run by the UAE-backed militias, and have not been released or even allowed visits by their families.
No evidence for the charges have been given yet, but the crackdown fits in a long history if repression of Yemenis from the northern provinces who live in the city of Aden.
The families of the detainees hold Musleh al-Dharhani, director of the al-Basatian police station, fully responsible for any criminal practice which detainees are subjected to, as well as for fabricating charges against the civilians.
They called on all activists and human rights organisations to condemn this act by committed by the STC militias against northern Yemeni citizens.
The families also called on human rights bodies and organisations to investigate the abduction of the eight citizens and condemn the criminal act committed by the UAE-backed militias.
They stressed that there is no criminal charges filed against the arrested people, and that they were neither directly nor indirectly involved with any parties to the conflict in Yemen
E.M