Man Who Witnessed Rape by UAE-Linked Militants in Yemen Found Dead
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Protesters have rallied in Yemen's port city of Aden for the fourth day, angry at the killing of a man who testified against four Emirati-backed militants accused of raping a seven-year-old boy.
Raafat Danbaa's mother said members of an Emirati-linked militia abducted her son outside their home and later killed him.
"His killers took him right in front of my eyes, outside the front door. They didn't even respect my presence," said the woman, identifying herself as Umm Raafat, Al Jazeera reported.
"I was looking at them and I was crying, but they took him anyway… an entire armed unit grabbing one man," she added.
In June 2018, an Associated Press investigation found that the Emirati military officers ran a prison in southern Yemen, where they tortured detainees, including with acts of sexual abuse.
A report later revealed the existence of a network of 27 such sites, used to imprison and torture Yemeni opponents of the UAE.
The report said that 49 people had died as a result of the torture they had undergone at the sites.
Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by a Saudi-led coalition for nearly four years.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement. The UAE has been contributing heavily to the war, which seeks to reinstall Yemen’s fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured until then. The war and the accompanying blockade have also caused famine across Yemen.
