Ex-captives describe Houthi rebel torture
Yemeni survivors recount being beaten senseless, writes Maggie Michael
Farouk Baakar was on duty as a medic at al-Rashid hospital the day a bleeding man was brought into the emergency room with gunshot wounds and signs of torture. He’d been whipped across the back and hung by his wrists for days.
The patient, Mr Baakar learned, had been left for dead by the side of a highway after being held captive in a prison run by the Houthi rebels who control northern Yemen.
Mr Baakar spent hours removing bullets and repairing ruptured intestine. He tended to the patient’s recovery for 80 days and, at the end, agreed to pose for a selfie with him.
Weeks later, Houthi security officials grabbed the man again. They searched his phone and found the photo.
Then they came for Mr Baakar. Militiamen stormed the hospital, blindfolded Mr Baakar and hustled him away in a pickup truck. Because he’d given medical help to an enemy of the Houthis, they told him, he was now their enemy too. He spent 18 months in prisons within the expanse of Yemen controlled by the Houthis. He says they burned him, beat him and chained him to the ceiling by his wrists for 50 days until they thought he was dead.
Mr Baakar and his patient are among thousands of people who have been imprisoned by the Houthi militia during the four years of Yemen’s grinding civil war. Many of them, an investigation has found, have suffered extreme torture — being smashed in their faces with batons, hung from chains by their wrists or genitals for weeks at a time, and scorched with acid.
The AP spoke with 23 people who said they survived or witnessed torture in Houthi detention sites, as well as with eight relatives of detainees, five lawyers and rights activists, and three security officers involved in prisoner swaps who said they saw marks of torture on inmates.
These accounts underscore the significance of a prisoner-swap agreement reached on Thursday at the start of United Nations-sponsored peace talks in Sweden between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
As a confidence-building measure, the two sides agreed to release thousands
of prisoners, though details must still be hammered out. But while the coalition side would release captured Houthi fighters, the rebels would largely free civilians who, like Mr Baakar, were imprisoned in brutal sweeps aimed at suppressing opposition and obtaining captives who could be traded for ransom or exchanged for Houthi fighters held by the other side.
Houthi leaders previously have denied that they engage in torture, though they did not respond to repeated requests for comment in recent weeks.
International outrage over the bloodshed in Yemen has largely focused on abuses carried out by the US-backed and Saudi-led military coalition fighting on the side of the Yemeni government.
The AP has exposed torture at secret prisons run by the UAE and their Yemeni allies and has documented the deaths of civilians from strikes by drones in the United States’ campaign against al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen.
Abuses by the Houthis have been less visible to the outside world as the rebels worked to eliminate dissent and silence journalists.
‘CRY TEARS OF BLOOD’
The Houthis began in the 1990s as a Shia revivalist religious movement. The group turned into an armed militia in 2004, when the military under then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh killed their founder, the brother of the current leader, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi.
Saleh fought the Houthi insurgency for six years, with thousands killed on both sides before reaching a cease-fire just months ahead of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that put an end to his rule.
Less than three years later, the Houthis joined ranks with Saleh in an alliance of convenience — the former autocrat saw a possible route back to power, while the rebels gained backing from the army units still loyal to him. Together, they occupied most of northern and western Yemen, driving out Saleh’s successor, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
In response, the US-backed coalition launched its campaign to restore Mr Hadi’s internationally recognised government and thwart what Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates claim is an attempt by Iran, the Houthis’ ally, to take over.
The Houthis have sought to entrench their rule by cracking down on a wide range of perceived enemies — young activists, religious minorities, socialists and others who might oppose Houthi rule.
But there are divisions within the movement.
Internally, a moderate faction of Houthi leaders acknowledged abuses and sought to put an end to them.
The leader’s brother, Yahia al-Houthi, set up a committee in 2016 to investigate reports of torture and indefinite detentions, and helped free 13,500 prisoners in its first three months.
The committee sent a video report to the leader, Abdel-Malek, showing scenes of overcrowded prison wards and prisoners with bruises, along with testimony from senior Houthi figures. Abdel-Malek never responded.
Instead, hard-line security officials shut down the committee and briefly detained two of its members.
The video was not made public, but the AP obtained a copy, and it contains startling admissions from prominent Houthi figures about abuses.
“What we saw would make you cry tears of blood,’’ one committee member says.
The Houthis eventually released Mr Baakar on Dec 3, 2017 after his family paid 5.5 million rials (263,000 baht).
Soon after he fled to Marib, the antiHouthi stronghold. He lives in a tent with other refugees, where he continues to treat the sick and wounded.