Prisoners’ Committee refutes false allegations of Saudi Arabia in releasing 163 prisoners of war

SANAA, May 07 (YPA) – After the Saudi regime announced what it called the initiative to release 163 prisoners from the army and popular committees, the ICRC was contacted to make the necessary arrangements, the National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs said.

“Three days after the alleged announcement, we met with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after visiting the detainees, who were found to be only 126 detainees, not 163, as announced by the Saudi regime,” the committee  said in a statement carried out by the Official News Agency of Yemen (Saba).

“We had received the disclosures that includes a number of names from them. We checked  them and matched them with our database of prisoners and detainees and it turns out the detainees released by Saudi Arabia are not prisoners of war, except for 5 of them and 4 abducted  fishermen who were kidnapped from the Red Sea, while others were not known to us as a national committee for prisoners’ affairs,” the statement  read.

“ While We welcome the release of any Yemeni, they must coordinate with the relevant authorities in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates and the Ministry of Human Rights,” the committee said.

The committee’s statement explained that nine of the detainees were foreigners of “ African nationality”  with whom we had no connection.

The statement stressed that the National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs is concerned with the follow-up and liberation of all prisoners of the army and popular committees and on this basis the nine prisoners and abductees were received.

As confirmed by the Prisoners Affairs Committee, the prisoners file is a humanitarian file that should not be used for outbidding and extortion. We cannot allow the Saudi regime to politicize the file of prisoners, target Yemeni workers or detainees of different nationalities, and present them as prisoners of war.

According to the statement, During this year, we carried out several unilateral humanitarian initiatives in which we released more than 400 prisoners of war loyal to the other side.

E.M