Human Rights Watch accused on Tuesday Houthi militias in Yemen of taking hostages and committing serious abuses - including torture - against them and their relatives.
A new report by HRW, which documented many cases, said that civilian abductees taken in by militias are being subjected to torture.
The organization called on Houthi militia leaders to halt all hostage-taking activity, release all detainees taken in arbitrarily, end torture, and punish perpetrators of human rights violations.
Former detainees told HRW that they were beaten with iron rods, whipped, shackled to walls, caned on their feet and threatened with rape.
In most cases, the experts found detainees were not informed of the reasons for their arrest, were not charged, were denied access to lawyers or a judge, and were held incommunicado for prolonged or indefinite periods.
HRW said the hostages were used to extort money or for prisoner exchanges.
The report documented 16 cases in which Houthis illegally detained people, often to force their relatives to pay money for their release. HRW stressed that hostage-taking constitutes a serious violation of human rights laws and a war crime, calling on the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and identify Houthi officials.
Walid al-Abara, director of the Center for Studies and Research at the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the recent “HRW report is the first of its kind for the organization to cover ongoing arrests and torture in Houthi prisons.”
“This is good,” Abara remarked.
“The report dealt with only 16 cases, but did not cover the dozen other cases of torture to death, including the case of the famous journalist Anwar al-Rukh whose death shook Yemenis,” he said.
He added that Houthi behavior documented in the report is all too familiar to Yemenis’ day-to-day life, saying that extortion is a well-known character for Houthi militia tactics, as well as torture.
"Rather than treat detainees humanely, some Houthi officials are exploiting their power to turn a profit through detention, torture, and murder," said HRW's Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson.
