3 Journalists detained in Houthi prisons have suffered extremely violent repression

The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate reported yesterday that three journalists held by the Houthi group in the capital Sana’a are being tortured.

The union said in a statement carried by Saba: It received a report from the families of journalists Abdulkhaleq Omran, Tawfiq al-Mansouri and Hareth Hamid, detained since 2015, in Sana’a, stating that they had been beaten, tortured and tortured inside the detention facility.

The statement condemned what it described as “brutal repression and arbitrary methods”, blaming the Houthi terrorist group for this systematic crime against fellow detainees.

The statement expressed strong condemnation of the group’s insistence on torturing these people, at a time when the Syndicate and the International Federation of Journalists are organizing an international campaign to release the colleagues, who are facing an unfair death sentence and have been living in very harsh and illegal detention conditions for nearly seven years.

The statement called for the immediate release of the journalists and appealed to all organizations concerned with freedom of expression to continue efforts to end their suffering.

The pro-Iranian Houthi group sentenced the journalists to death in April 2020, years after they were arrested for cooperating with the legitimate government and the Arab coalition.

Since its coup in September 2014, dozens of journalists have been arrested by Houthi militias, 12 of whom are still detained and 4 are at risk of death in connection with the Houthi death sentence.

Last month, the International Federation of Yemeni Journalists and the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate launched an open campaign to send a letter to the UN special envoy to Yemen, pressuring Houthi militias to release the journalists in detention.

A recent report by the Media Freedoms Observatory in Yemen recorded last November 6 cases of violation by Houthi militias against Yemeni journalists, ranging from three cases of threats to two cases of detention. One case documented a trial, where a Houthi court sentenced journalist Nabil Al-Sadawi, employee of the Yemeni news agency Saba, to 8 years in prison, after his arrest by Houthi militias six years ago.