Image [Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency]
Originally posted to the Middle East Monitor website, 14 March 2022
The Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate announced yesterday that three journalists detained by the Houthi group in the capital Sanaa have been subjected to torture, Anadolu reported.
The rights group said it had “received a report from the families of journalists Abdel-Khaleq Omran, Tawfiq Al-Mansoori, and Harith Hamid, who have been detained since 2015 in Sanaa, stating that they had been beaten, abused and tortured in prison.”
It condemned “this brutal repression and arbitrary methods”, saying it held the Houthis responsible for “the systematic crime against fellow detainees.”
It also expressed “strong disapproval of the group’s insistence on torturing journalists who are facing an unjust death sentences and have been living in very harsh and illegal detention conditions for nearly seven years.”
Calling for their immediate release, the body said: “These crimes against fellow journalists do not have a statute of limitations, and their perpetrators will not go unpunished.”
There was no immediate comment from the Houthis.
On 11 April 2020, the Houthis sentenced the four journalists, including the three named by the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, to death on charges of collaborating with the Saudi-led Arab coalition, a change the journalists deny.
According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Yemen is ranked 169th out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
