The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) has documented many human rights violations against journalists, media, a woman human rights defender, and a judge in Yemen during the past two months carried out by all parties to the conflict.

Judge Abdulwahab Qatran released

On 12 June 2024, retired Judge Abdulwahab Qatran was released, and the case against him was closed. Informed local sources confirmed that he has not yet received his electronic devices, which are being held by the Security and Intelligence Service in Sana’a, and thus he is still unable to access his accounts on social media networks.

On 02 January 2024, the Houthi group arrested Judge Qatran, after raiding his home in Sana’a. He was held for a long period of his detention in a solitary confinement cell at the Security and Intelligence Service, and prevented from communicating with his family and lawyer.

For more information about his case, see here.

Woman human rights defender Fatima Al-Arwali  

Prominent human rights lawyer Abdulmajeed Sabra confirmed in an exclusive statement to GCHR that the case file of woman human rights defender Fatima Saleh Al-Arwali, against whom a death sentence was issued, has been submitted by the Specialised Criminal Court of First Instance in Sana’a to the Specialised Criminal Prosecution, which will summon her soon to hear whether she will appeal the initial ruling issued against her. If she decides to maintain her previous position of accepting the ruling, her case will be referred to the Supreme Court. However, if she decides not to accept the ruling, the procedures for appealing the ruling issued against her will begin.

On 05 December 2023, the Specialised Criminal Court of First Instance in Sana’a issued a discretionary death penalty (Ta’zir) against Al-Arwali after convicting her based on arbitrary charges made apparently in retaliation for her human rights work, including defending women’s and children’s rights.

For more information on the details of her case, see here.

Photojournalist briefly detained in Aden

On 13 June 2024, security forces affiliated with the Southern Transitional Council, supported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), arbitrarily arrested photojournalist Saleh Al-Obaidi, and detained him at Dar Saad police station in the city of Aden. He was released the next day, after a widespread solidarity campaign supporting him was carried out by press institutions and citizens on social media networks. 

Al-Obaidi works as a photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in addition to local media organisations.

Journalist Ahmed Maher sentenced to four years in prison

On 28 May 2024, the Specialised Criminal Court in Aden, issued a four-year prison sentence against journalist Ahmed Maher, 29 years old, after convicting him of the charges brought against him by the Specialised Criminal Prosecution, which includes two counts of spreading false and misleading news and forging official documents. His lawyer has announced an appeal of this ruling against him.

On 06 August 2022, Maher was arrested by armed men affiliated with the Southern Transitional Council after they stormed his house. He was detained at Dar Saad police station, where he was interrogated and subjected to forms of torture and ill-treatment during his interrogation sessions. He was arrested along with his brother Mayas Maher, who was also subjected to torture and ill-treatment and was not released, despite having committed no crime, until 19 October 2022. His brother Mayas was used as a tool to increase pressure on him to confess to crimes that he did not commit.

On 03 September 2022, the Southern Media Centre published on its Facebook page a video of Ahmed Maher allegedly confessing to his participation in the media effort during the implementation of a number of terrorist operations, and to printing false official identities. He appeared to be in a suspicious and exhausted state.

On 01 October 2022, after visiting him in Bir Ahmed prison where he is being held, his family issued a statement confirming, “All the confessions he made were under the pressure of threats, coercion and torture.”

On 21 April 2024, his family had published a statement on his Facebook page, managed by one of his colleagues, which stated: “The family of journalist Ahmed Maher regrets the delay in holding their son’s trial over the previous period, despite the fact that his case is considered a public opinion issue in Yemen. It notes that he attended 12 hearing before the Specialised Criminal Court and reviewed the evidence of his innocence, and all that remains is to schedule a hearing to pronounce the ruling. The family affirms its adherence to all of its son’s rights, and demands his acquittal of the charges falsely attributed to him.”

Maher has gone on several hunger strikes in Bir Ahmed prison since his arrest, the last of which he started on 17 January 2023, to demand a fair trial.

Politicised death sentences issued by court affiliated with Houthi government

In a joint statement, Mwatana Organisation for Human Rights, the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), and GCHR called on the government of the Ansar Allah (Houthi) group to revoke all death sentences issued by the Specialised Criminal Court in Sana’a on 01 June 2024 against 44 Yemeni citizens, immediately release them, and drop the charges against them. The defendants are charged with communicating with the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and are undergoing an unfair trial without any respect to the minimum standards of due process. 

The statement noted, “According to Mwatana, 11 out of the 44 Yemenis sentenced to death were forcibly disappeared and detained incommunicado in April 2020, for periods ranging from five to seven months. The families of the disappeared were unable to learn of their location and communicate with them during this period. The families were later informed that their disappeared relatives are held at the security and intelligence headquarters in Sanaa.”

A sibling of one of the detainees said, “When an armed group in civilian clothes arrested my brother, they called him, a ‘Dae’sh member’, and forced him into a vehicle parked on the opposite side of the street.” He continued, “We later learned that the kidnappers were from the Ansar Allah (Houthi) group, and that a similar arrest campaign had targeted others in the same neighbourhood. Of course, we did not ask about him in government departments because we knew that we would be exposed to financial extortion, as families of other detainees faced.”

According to the defense lawyer, numerous violations marred the arrest, detention, and trial procedures, challenging the validity of the rulings issued in this trial amid an absence of evidence supporting the accusations, and a violation of all guarantees and rights of the defendants to a fair trial. The defendants faced illegal enforced disappearance during their detention. The prosecution further dominated the trial proceedings in pleading while the defendants were unable to exercise their right to defense. The judge has been issuing rulings over the phone in numerous recent political cases, without evidence or a draft explaining the reasons for the ruling in the judge’s handwriting. The defendants’ lawyer commented on this issue that: “The judge’s delivery of the ruling over the phone raises suspicion and doubt about the possibility that these rulings and their wordings could be issued by a party other than the court.”

The joint statement documented a similar case for another citizen as follows, “On 01 June 2024, the Specialised Criminal Court issued a death sentence and froze the assets and property of Adnan Al-Harazi (51 years old), founder and director of the company Prodigy Systems Inc., which has worked since 2006 in the technical, monitoring and evaluation field as an independent body for relief work done by organisations and United Nations agencies. Al-Harazi faced accusations of “participating in a criminal agreement with those working for the benefit of the Saudi-Emirati aggression, seeking and communicating with a foreign country in a state of war with Yemen, namely the United States of America and the United Kingdom, and contracting with international organisations and governmental bodies (the American Maestral International, the World Bank, the British Council, the Dutch University of Maastricht) affiliated with these countries.”

Targeting Independent media platforms  

The targeting of the Yemen Digital Media Foundation represents a clear example of the efforts of the de facto government in Sana’a, the Houthi group, to control all media platforms, especially the independent ones that are not subject to its control, and to use the judiciary as a means to seize them.

On 02 January 2023, the Specialised Criminal Prosecution issued a supplementary indictment against 24 citizens, including 15 journalists. The supplementary indictment, a copy of which was reviewed by GCHR, included Taha Ahmed Al-Maamari, owner of the Yemen Digital Media Foundation and Yemen Live artistic and media production companies, and 17 employees of these two companies, in addition to Raafat Mohammed Al-Maamari, coordinator of BBC channel, Muhib Mohammed Al-Mariri, correspondent of Al-Ghad Al-Mashreq Channel in Taiz, Atef Ahmed Al-Qahtani, employee of Al-Ghad Al-Mashreq Channel, Salah Abdullah Al-Aqel, office director of Al-Ghad Al-Mashreq Channel in Aden, Shihab Mohammed Abdullah, and Mahmoud Abdo Al-Hamidi, correspondents of correspondent of the Saudi Alekhbariya Channel.

The indictment included bringing a charge against them, namely, of allegedly providing assistance to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its allies in the war through the two companies, Yemen Digital Media and Yemen Live, and working with various television channels and communicating with them via email.

On 15 September 2023, Taha Al-Maamari published on his Facebook page a post in which he announced that influential people affiliated with the Houthi group had confiscated the Yemen Digital Media Company, looted its seal, commercial register, and official papers, and controlled private property. All of these blatant violations occurred against a private media organisation despite a judicial decision issued on 18 April 2021.

Recommendations

GCHR urges all parties to the conflict in Yemen to:

1. Immediately release all those who have been arbitrarily arrested, detained, or tried on fabricated charges;
2. Respect public freedoms, including freedom of the press and the right to peaceful assembly; and
3. Ensure that human rights defenders, including journalists, bloggers, academics, and internet activists, are able to carry out their legitimate work and express themselves freely without fear of reprisal and in a manner free from all restrictions, including judicial harassment.