DUBAI: Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen have detained and tortured 10 journalists for nearly four years on trumped-up charges of spying, the human-rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
The 10 are accused of working on behalf of the Saudi-led military coalition fighting on behalf of the internationally recognized government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Amnesty said the 10 men had been held since the summer of 2015 and that they were formally charged in December 2018 with a series of offenses, including spying and aiding the coalition, by a special court that handles terrorism-related cases.
“It is completely outrageous that these men could face the death penalty simply for doing their jobs,” said Rasha Mohamed, Amnesty’s Yemen researcher.
“These men are being punished for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression. The charges against them are false and should be dropped immediately.”
Some of the journalists worked for online news outlets affiliated with the Islah party, which is part of Hadi’s government, Amnesty said. Nine of them were arrested in a raid on a hotel in Sanaa and one man was detained at home by Houthi forces.
“Over the course of their detention the men have been forcibly disappeared, held in intermittent incommunicado detention, been deprived of access to medical care and suffered torture and other ill-treatment,” Amnesty said.
The accusations are the latest charges of human-rights abuses leveled against the Houthis. They have also been accused of abducting children and using them as child soldiers in the conflict, and of illegally deploying mines in civilian areas.
The Houthis denied on Wednesday that they had detained the 10 journalists. The head of the group’s “supreme revolutionary committee,” Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, said: “There is no truth to what some are claiming. Let them provide proof that these people are present and that they are journalists.”
