Prisoners decry alleged abuses in UAE prisons
CAIRO » The 15 officers who arrived at the prison in southern Yemen hid their faces behind head dresses, 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 event on March 10 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 last June. The AP has since identified at least five prisons where security forces use sexual torture to brutalize and break inmates.
The AP first asked the Pentagon about grave 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.
“U.S. forces are required to report credible allegations of detainee abuse,” he said. “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.
UAE officials did not respond to requests for comment.
In Yemen’s three-year civil war, UAE forces that are purportedly fighting on behalf of Yemen’s government have overtaken wide swaths of territory, towns and cities in the south. They have swept up hundreds of men into a network of at least 18 hidden prisons on suspicion of being al-Qaida or Islamic State militants.
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.