Ex-captives describe torture by Houthi rebels
marib (yemen) — 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, 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.
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 Baakar. Militiamen stormed the hospital, blindfolded 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.
Baakar and his patient are among thousands of people who have been imprisoned by the Houthi militia during the four years of Yemen’s war. Many of them, an Associated Press 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 some 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 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.
The Abductees’ Mothers Union, an association of female relatives of detainees jailed by the Houthis, has documented more than 18,000 detainees in the last four years, including 1,000 cases of torture in a network of secret prisons, according to Sabah Mohammed, a representative of the group in the city of Marib.
The mothers’ group says at least 126 prisoners have died from torture since the Houthis took over the capital, Sanaa, in late 2014.
Baakar says they slapped and kicked him, beat him with batons on his face, teeth and body, and taunted him: “You will be killed because you are a traitor.” The militiamen took him to a location he couldn’t identify, stood him on a wooden box, chained his wrists to the ceiling and then kicked the box out from under his feet.
He says they stripped him and whipped his naked body, then pulled out his nails and tore out his hair. He fainted.
“It was so painful, especially when they come the next days and press on the bruises with their fingers,” he said.
The Houthis became more and more creative, Baakar said. They once brought plastic bottles and with a lighter melted the plastic over his head, back, and between his thighs.
Eventually, Baakar was taken to Hodeida castle, the 500-year-old Ottoman-era fortress on the Red Sea coast. He says guards pushed him into a filthy basement known as the “Pressure Room” and hung him by his wrists. In a dark corner, he could see shapes of dead cats and even torn fingers.
When he grew thirsty, he said, torturers splashed water on his face and he licked off the drops. At times, they would let other prisoners enter his cell and give him water from a bottle. On the day guards thought Baakar had died, then realised he was still alive, they untied him and allowed two prisoners to feed and clean him.
As Baakar began to recover from his wounds, other detainees who had been tortured began asking for his help. He tried to heal the injured. He carried out simple surgeries, without anesthesia, using electric wires, the only tool he had in prison.
Sometimes the guards allowed him to go about his medical work. Other times, he says, they turned on him and punished him for helping his fellow prisoners.
The Houthis released Baakar on December 3, 2017, after his family paid 5.5 million rials, about $8,000 at the time. Soon after he fled to Marib, the anti-Houthi stronghold. He lives in a tent with other refugees, where he continues to treat the sick and wounded.