UAE Secret Jails in Yemen: Unknown Fate of Inmates (+Video)

A secret network of at least 18 prisons along southern Yemen have been home to brutal and inhumane torture, according to an investigation by the Associated Press.

Torture methods have included what is known as “the grill” which is when a person is “tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire,” according to the AP.

The prisons are run by the United Arab Emirates or Yemeni forces “created and trained by the Persian Gulf nation,” according to multiple accounts from former detainees, families of prisoners, civil rights lawyers, and Yemeni military officials.

While senior American defense officials confirmed that US forces participate in interrogations of detainees at the prisons, but denied “any participation in or knowledge of human rights abuses,” according to the AP. Though the US could still be in violation of international law if they had questioned detainees who have been tortured.

According to Tasnim dispatches, families of captives in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) secret prisons in southern Yemen gathered recently in front of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) bureau and expressed concern about the unknown fate of their relatives.

The abduction and apprehension is not the final stage of extreme brutal torture, these are all titles and features of secret prisons mentioned in a special report prepared by an international institution in Yemen. These prisons have been administrated by the UAE directly, a country who is trying to finish the war in its benefit at any cost.

In this regard, a Yemeni citizen told Tasnim, “The report that revealed the existence of secret prisons of the UAE’s aggressors has demonstrated that Yemeni issue has come under attention rightly and fairly. However, what have remained hidden is much bigger.”

Families of prisoners and captives in the UAE jails condemned disrespectful and insulting behavior shown towards prisoners. They have called for speedy freedom of their relatives.

Another Yemeni citizen told Tasnim, “We ask all the human right organizations to pay attention to issue of human rights in Yemen. We want them to pursue the conditions of prisoners and captives, because our captives in the enemy mercenaries’ prisons are facing ill-treatment. We want them to adopt a practical measure to fruit results.”

“We want all the organizations that are advocates of the human rights to do something. Today and by the means of such gatherings which could be assumed as a last opportunity for these institutions, we ask them to secure the freedom of our captives and encourage an Islamic behavior or at least humanitarian behavior towards them,” a Yemeni citizen noted.

A Yemeni women said also that “my child, Faisal Jame, is a prisoner and I do not know what has happened to him in Ma’rib province, he knows nothing about us and we have no news about him for over one year and five months.”

While the US Secretary of Defense James Mattis denies participation of his forces in the Yemeni prisoners’ extreme torture, families of captives highlight the international organizations’ reports on US forces’ participation.

Secret UAE prisons will never prevent realization of Yemeni nation’s causes and cannot stop their resolve; rather they underline the rightness of the importance of Yemen issue and the fact that the Saudi-led coalition aggression against Yemen is unjustified and irrational.