Yemen warring sides set Jan 20 for prisoner swap
rimbo (sweden) — Delegations from Yemen’s warring sides have agreed on Tuesday to set January 20 as a final date to swap over 15,000 prisoners from both sides of the country’s devastating civil war, according to a member of the rebel delegation.
The internationally recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and Iran-backed Houthi rebels said that they have exchanged prisoner lists, allowing four weeks for review, ahead of a final swap to be facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The move is a crucial step in the implementation of an agreement reached earlier this month on the exchange of all prisoners held by both sides over the four-year civil war.
The government, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition, said it has provided UN mediators with an initial list of 8,200 prisoners allegedly held by the Houthis.
The government list included members of the family of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed by the Houthis in December of last year. It also included more than 300 children and 88 women.
The rebel delegation also said it has provided its own list of prisoners held by government forces.
“The Houthis provided a list of 7,487 captives and detainees. We provided a (list) of 8,576 detainees,” said Askar Zouail of the government delegation. “But the number of detainees (held by the rebels) exceeds 18,000 detainees since the beginning of the war (in March 2015).” —
rimbo (Sweden) — Yemen’s government and rival rebels announced on Tuesday plans for a mass prisoner swap, exchanging some 15,000 names, as UN-brokered talks on ending the country’s war entered their seventh day.
Nearly four years into a war that has pushed 14 million Yemenis to the brink of mass starvation, the Saudi-backed government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and Houthi rebels began talks on Thursday in the rural town of Rimbo in Sweden. The talks are expected to last a week.
The Houthi rebels announced that the names of a total of 15,000 detainees and prisoners had been exchanged. A source in the government delegation said their side had released the names of 8,200 detainees but declined to comment on the combined total.
The rebels’ Al Masirah television said both parties had two weeks to revise the list of names.
The rebels and government have agreed to a 45-day deadline for the exchange, sources in both delegations said.
Prisoners will be flown out through two airports: governmentheld Seyoun, in central Yemen, and the rebel-held capital Sanaa, home to an international airport that has been largely shut down for three years. The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed it will oversee the exchange.
The Sweden talks are the first meeting between the two parties in the Yemen conflict, which pits the Iran-backed Houthis against the Hadi government, allied with a regional military coalition led by Saudi Arabia. Brokered by UN special envoy Martin Griffiths earlier this month, the prisoner swap was one of the main points at this week’s talks. Griffiths said the prisoner swap would be “very, very considerable in terms of the numbers that we hope to get released within a few weeks”.
The prisoner exchange was the only issue the rival delegations were confirmed to have met on face-to-face.
Among the other issues under discussion are potential humanitarian corridors, the reopening of the defunct Sanaa international airport, and Hodeida, at the heart of an ongoing offensive.