UN welcomes Yemen detainees release

DUBAI: The United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, welcomed an offer by Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement to unilaterally release a number of detainees, saying he hoped it would lead to further progress on an agreed prisoner exchange deal.

The movement on Monday released hundreds of Yemeni prisoners under the supervision of the United Nations as part of a peace initiative.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which facilitated the release, said 290 Yemeni nationals were transferred from Sanaa to their homes.

A prisoner swap between the Ansar Allah and the internationally recognised government of Yemen was one of three pillars of a breakthrough deal reached in Sweden in December to try to resolve the more than fouryear conflict.

The Un-brokered prisoner swap deal, involving some 7,000 detainees on each side, stalled as the two sides struggled to agree at talks on its implementation.

The group on Monday had said they would release 350 prisoners from the Sweden deal detainee lists.

“Our initiative proves our credibility in implementing the Sweden agreement and we call on the other party to take a comparable step,” said the head of the group’s prisoner affairs committee, Abdul Qader al Murtada said in a statement.

“I hope this step will lead to further initiatives that will facilitate the exchange of all the conflict-related detainees as per the Stockholm Agreement,” said the UN’S Yemen Envoy Martin Griffiths, calling on all parties to meet soon to discuss exchanges.