AL-MUKALLA: Local and international right groups have joined Yemeni officials in accusing the Iran-backed Houthis of putting the life of an abducted journalist at risk by denying him lifesaving medication.
Amnesty International said on Monday that Tawfiq Al-Mansouri, a Yemeni reporter abducted in Sanaa along with nine other journalists in 2015, is facing worsening health problems because the militia refuses to provide him with essential treatment.
Lynn Maalouf, the global rights group’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, described the denial of urgent medical aid for Al-Mansouri as “an act of cruelty that violates (international) bans on torture and other ill-treatment.”
She said that the journalist is suffering from diabetes, kidney failure, heart problems, prostate inflammation and asthma.
“More recently we received worrying information that he contracted COVID-19 in June, and that since October his health has further deteriorated since he is being denied crucial treatment for his heart problems,” Maalouf said.
Al-Mansouri was one of four journalists sentenced to death by a Houthi-controlled court in Sanaa in June following accusations of colluding with the Arab coalition and Yemen’s internationally recognized government.
Five journalists were released during the latest major prisoner swap between the rebels and the government in October
Amnesty International demanded the Houthis provide Al-Mansouri with the necessary drugs and treatment, overturn his death sentence and release him.
Abductees’ Mothers Association, a Yemeni rights group that advocates for releasing war prisoners, said in a statement that the Houthis are also refusing to allow Al-Mansouri’s family to visit him.
Family members told the organization that he had contracted new diseases in detention and his health is deteriorating.
In the central province of Marib, the five journalists freed by the Houthis said that conditions endured by their four colleagues are growing worse as their captors subject them to intensifying psychological and physical torture.
The journalists urged the international community to pressure the Houthis to release the four prisoners.
In a letter to Maeen Sharim, deputy UN envoy to Yemen, the head of the Yemeni government delegation in prisoner swap talks, Hadi Al-Haej, said that the Houthis risk killing the Yemeni journalist by depriving him of vital drugs and preventing his family from visiting him.
Al-Haej urged the UN Yemen envoy’s office to push for the release of the abducted journalists.
Western envoys to Yemen also joined in calls for the journalists to be freed.
“We call for the urgent release of journalist Tawfiq Al-Mansouri in view of a deteriorating health condition that is threatening his life” the British ambassador to Yemen, Michael Aron, said last week.
The Yemeni government said that the Houthis should be punished for aggravating the suffering of Yemenis and carrying out human rights abuses against their opponents by designating them as a terrorist organization.
Yemen’s Vice President Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar on Sunday hailed US moves to label the Houthis as a terrorist organization.
He urged David Shanker, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, to accelerate the process in response to “public, political and legal demands” for the Houthis to be punished.
