Detainees in Yemen decry Emiratis’ sexual abuses
Hundreds held without charges in network of hidden prisons
The 15 officers who arrived at the prison in southern Yemen hid their faces behind headdresses, but their accents were clearly foreign — from the United Arab Emirates. They lined up the detainees and ordered them to undress and lie down. The officers then searched the anal cavity of each prisoner, claiming that they were looking for contraband cellphones.
The men screamed and wept. Those who resisted were threatened by barking dogs and beaten until they bled.
Hundreds of detainees suffered similar sexual abuse during the March 10 event at Beir Ahmed prison in the southern city of Aden, according to seven witnesses interviewed by the Associated Press. Descriptions of the mass abuse offer a window into a world of rampant sexual torture and impunity in UAE-controlled prisons in Yemen.
The UAE is a key U.S. ally whose secret prisons and widespread torture were exposed by an AP investigation in June 2017. The AP has since identified at least five prisons where security forces use sexual torture to brutalize and break inmates.
Yemen’s war began in 2015, after Iranianbacked Houthi rebels took over much of the country’s north. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are leading a coalition to fight the rebels, but UAE forces have overtaken wide swaths of territory, towns and cities in the south. The U.S. is backing the coalition with billions of dollars in arms, and partners with the Emiratis in antiterrorism campaigns.
Emiratis have swept up hundreds of Yemeni men into a network of at least 18 hidden prisons on suspicion of being al-Qaida or Islamic State militants. The prisoners are held without charges or trials.
The AP first asked the Pentagon about serious rights abuses committed by the UAE one year ago. But despite well-documented reports of torture reported by the AP, human rights groups and even the United Nations, Marine Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the U.S. has seen no evidence of detainee abuse in Yemen.
“We have received no credible allegations that would substantiate the allegations put forth in your line of question/story.”
U.S. officials have acknowledged that American forces receive intelligence from UAE partners and have participated in interrogations in Yemen. But Rankine-Galloway said he could not comment on intelligence sharing with partners.
Reacting to the AP’s report, the State Department called the allegations “disturbing” and called on the UAE to investigate.
“We call on all parties to the conflict, including the UAE, to treat prisoners and detainees humanely and to ensure that allegations of abuse are investigated quickly and thoroughly,” the department said in a statement.
UAE officials did not respond to requests for comment, but the country’s permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva released a statement after publication claiming that the Yemeni government is in complete control of its prisons.
“The UAE has never managed or run prisons or secret detention centers in Yemen,” the mission said.
But Yemen’s interior minister has said he does not have authority over prisons and must ask for UAE permission to enter Aden, where witnesses documented much of the sexual torture.
Witnesses said Yemeni guards working under the direction of Emirati officers have used various methods of sexual torture and humiliation. They raped detainees while other guards filmed the assaults. They electrocuted prisoners’ genitals or hung rocks from their testicles. They sexually violated others with wooden and steel poles.
From inside the prison in Aden, detainees smuggled letters and drawings to the AP about the sexual abuse. The drawings were made on plastic plates with blue ink pen.
The artist told the AP that he was detained last year and has been in three prisons. “They tortured me without even accusing me of anything. Sometimes I wish they would give me a charge so I can confess and end this pain,” he said. “The worst thing about it is that I wish for death every day and I can’t find it.”
He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of further abuse.
The drawings show a man hanging naked from chains while he is being electrocuted, another inmate on the floor surrounded by snarling dogs as several people kick him, and graphic depictions of anal rape.
Based on the AP investigation last year, the U.S. House of Representatives voted May 24 to require Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to determine whether U.S. military or intelligence personnel violated the law in interrogations of detainees in Yemen.
The House adopted the measure as part of the 2019 defense authorization bill, which is still under consideration by the Senate. The amendment was sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. The Defense Department would have to submit a report within 120 days to Congress.
Khanna called the AP’s report Wednesday “a shocking revelation of the ongoing human rights abuses happening in Yemen.”
“Now, with greater urgency than ever before, we need the Pentagon to launch an investigation and determine whether our nation has been involved in torturing prisoners in Yemen,” he said.