Rights org calls for rescuing detainees in UAE prisons in Aden
SANAA, Jan. 16 (YPA) – “Rights Radar”, a human rights organization based in Amsterdam, on Wednesday called for an urgent move to rescue detainees in the prisons run by the UAE forces in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden.
A statement issued by the organization stressed the need for a United Nations action to save the lives of detainees in the UAE-run prisons in Aden city in general and the detainees in Bir-Ahmed prison in particular.
According to the statement, many of the detainees in Bir-Ahmed prison have carried out an open hunger strike in an attempt to draw the world’s attention to their forgotten case, after they had suffered the worst forms of torture and abuse by their jailers.
In its statement, the organization also called for conducting an impartial and transparent investigation to uncover the circumstances of deaths of detainees and serious injuries in the prisons of Aden.
The organization said in its statement, quoting private sources, that “the inmates of Bir-Ahmed prison are subjected to serious psychological and physical abuse.”
“They have not been prosecuted and most of them have not been charged, while many prisoners do not know the reasons for their arrest,” the statement added.
Since last year, prisoners in Bir Ahmed prison have carried out from time to time an open hunger strike to protest the lack of implementation of the prosecution’s orders to release them.
In mid-September 2018, the prison administration released 12 detainees who had been detained for nearly two years. 29 prisoners had been released after international and local calls and demands for their release because they were detained without a legal justification.
The prison is run by the so-called “security belt’ forces loyal to the UAE, but recently the Yemeni Prison Authority has started to supervise it within the framework of understandings between the Interior Ministry at the exiled Haid’s government and the UAE.
The UAE is the second largest country in the Saudi-led Arab coalition, which has been carrying out a military aggression against Yemen under the pretext of supporting “the legitimacy of the resigned president Abdurbo Mansour Hadi.”
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