'Just let them die'

'Just let them die': Yemeni prisoners describe horrific torture in Houthi jails

Former detainees open up about life-changing torture injuries, including being left paralysed or unable to speak, while peace talks between Yemen's warring factions continue

Civilians in Yemen have described torture at the hands of the Houthi rebels including being strung up by their genitals and doused in acid.

Their horrific testimonies emerged as tense peace talks in Sweden between the country’s warring factions entered a second day.

The gruesome accounts underscore the importance of a massive UN-backed prisoner swap that was signed on Thursday by the Iran-backed rebels and Yemen’s recognised government, who have been fighting since March 2015.

According to the deal, some 5,000 prisoners from both sides will be released as a confidence-building measure to bolster the peace negotiations, which kicked off north of Stockholm this week.

Since the start of the three-and-a-half-year civil war, more than 18,000 people are believed to have been locked up by the Houthi fighters and many of them tortured.

Torture has also been recorded by rights groups in prisons run by the Yemeni government and its Gulf allies, including the United Arab Emirates.

Farouk Baakar, a Yemeni medic at al-Rashid hospital in north Yemen, was arrested by seven militiamen in 2016 after treating a man who had been tortured and shot by the Houthis.

Mr Baakar told Associated Press (AP) he was held for 18 months in Houthi-controlled prisons, including in the “Pressure Room”, the basement of a 500-year-old Ottoman castle in the Red Sea city of Hodeidah.

 There he said he was stripped, whipped and his nails and hair were pulled out. He was later splashed with melted plastic, beaten and chained to a ceiling by his wrists for 50 days until his captors thought he was dead.

“It was so painful, especially when they come the next days and press on the bruises with their fingers,” he said.

The doctor described trying to treat other prisoners held with him who had been tortured, with makeshift tools such as electrical wire.

One man said he had been hung by his penis and testes and was unable to urinate. Another’s buttocks had been sealed after the Houthi guards doused his back with acid, melting his skin. Mr Baakar described using wire to help him make an opening and remove excrement.

“When I asked Houthi guards for help, saying the man is dying, their only answer was: ‘Let him die’,” Mr Baakar added.

The doctor was released last December after his family paid 5.5 million rials, about $8,000 at the time, and fled to Marib, an anti-Houthi stronghold in central Yemen where he now lives in a tent.

He is one of 23 people interviewed by AP who either survived or witnessed torture in Houthi detention centres.

The testimonies come just months after both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accused the UAE, and its allied Yemeni forces, of torturing detainees in their secret prisons in the south of Yemen.

In those prisons, the rights groups said people had been electrocuted, stripped, caned and whipped.

The UAE is part of a Saudi Arabia-led alliance that launched a bombing campaign in March 2015 to oust the Houthi rebels, who had swept control of the country, forcing recognised Yemeni president Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to flee.

That triggered a nearly four-year war that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in terms of numbers.

The UN’s envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, warned this week that half of the country’s 30 million population could be at risk of famine if the conflict does not end immediately.

As many as 16,000 civilians have been killed, according to the UN. On Friday it said at least 1,500 civilians were killed or injured between August and October alone: an average of 123 civilian casualties every week.

The UN hopes the peace talks in Stockholm will at least lead to a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid groups to access the most devastated areas. They are the first talks since 2016.

The prisoner swap will see the release of detainees, people who have been forcibly disappeared and those under house arrest.

The International Red Cross said it would oversee the exchange, which is expected to take weeks.

Thanks for reading.