Senators eye probe of U.S. role in Yemen torture
Defense officials deny knowledge of human rights abuses
WASHINGTON — Pressure mounted on the U.S. Defense Department on Friday after multiple U.S. senators called for investigations into reports that U.S. military interrogators worked with forces from the United Arab Emirates who are accused of torturing detainees in Yemen.
John McCain, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the ranking Democrat, Jack Reed, called the reports “deeply disturbing.”
The reports were revealed in an investigation by the Associated Press published Thursday.
That same day, McCain and Reed wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis asking him to conduct an immediate review of the reported abuse and what U.S. forces knew.
“Even the suggestion that the United States tolerates torture by our foreign partners compromises our national security mission by undermining the moral principle that distinguishes us from our enemies — our belief that all people possess basic human rights,” the senators wrote. “We are confident that you find these allegations as extremely troubling as we do.”
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, also called for an investigation and noted that support for the UAE forces could violate a law he wrote that forbids funding to known human rights violators.
The AP’s report detailed a network of secret prisons across southern Yemen where hundreds are detained in the hunt for al-Qaida militants and held without charges. American defense officials confirmed to the AP that U.S. forces have interrogated some detainees in Yemen but denied any participation in, or knowledge of, human rights abuses.
They told the AP that the department had looked into reports of torture and concluded that its personnel were not involved or aware of any abuse. The American officials confirmed the U.S. provides questions to the Emiratis and receives transcripts of their interrogations. The officials said the U.S. also provides information to the UAE on suspected al-Qaida militants who the U.S. believes should be picked up or questioned.
Yemeni Brig. Gen. Farag Salem al-Bahsani, commander of the Mukalla-based 2nd Military District, told the AP that many of those men were later arrested.
The American Civil Liberties Union also said Friday that it had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for U.S. records related to the interrogations.
The 18 lock-ups are run by the UAE and by Yemeni forces it created, according to accounts from former detainees, families of prisoners, civil rights lawyers and Yemeni military officials. At Mukalla’s Riyan airport, former inmates described shipping containers smeared with feces and crammed with blindfolded detainees. They said they were beaten, roasted alive on a spit and sexually assaulted, among other abuse. One witness, a member of a Yemeni security force, said American forces were at times only yards away.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Friday that the allegations are “completely untrue” and a “political game” by Yemeni militias to discredit a Saudi-led coalition that includes the UAE. It says it does not run or oversee any prisons in Yemen.
Most of the sites are run by either the Hadramawt Elite or Security Belt, Yemeni forces that were created, trained and financed by the UAE. They are under the authority of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, but multiple Yemeni government officials told the AP they have no control over them and they answer to the Emiratis.