Houthis abduct dozens of Yemenis in crackdown on 1962 revolution celebrations

Update Armed Yemeni men gather in Sanaa to show their support for the Houthis. (File/AFP)
Armed Yemeni men gather in Sanaa to show their support for the Houthis. (File/AFP)
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Updated 22 September 2024
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Houthis abduct dozens of Yemenis in crackdown on 1962 revolution celebrations

Armed Yemeni men gather in Sanaa to show their support for the Houthis. (File/AFP)
  • Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate said that armed Houthis abducted Mohammed Dabwan Al-Mayahi from his home in Sanaa on Friday and seized his belongings

AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthis have abducted dozens of Yemenis in the past 48 hours, the latest in a series of mass arrests in areas under their control for commemorating the 1962 revolution.

Local media and activists on Sunday said that those abducted included academics, politicians and journalists in Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeida and Taiz for celebrating or inciting the public to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the 1962 revolution on Sept. 26.

According to Faisal Al-Shabebi, a Yemeni journalist from the former ruling party, the General People’s Congress, the Houthis abducted at least three senior members of the party in the province of Dhamar, including the head of the party’s provincial office, Abdul Khaleq Al-Munejar, and Fuad Al-Nahari, a journalist, among others, over their revolution celebrations.

The crackdown in Dhamar comes as other Houthis stormed houses and gatherings in Sanaa, Taiz, Hodeidah and Ibb and abducted Yemenis who were celebrating the revolution or had expressed their intention to celebrate revolution day on Thursday.

“These arrests by the Houthi militia are part of their miserable attempts to suppress free people who reject their racist sectarian ideology, obliterate the immortal revolution of September 26, and terrorize Yemeni society into submission to this gang,” Al-Shabebi said.

The revolution of September 1962 deposed Zaidi imamates in northern Yemen, ending centuries of repressive rule and paving the way for establishing the Yemen Arab Republic.

Yemenis say that the Houthi militia and the imams share the same radical doctrine that limits the rule of Yemen to Hashemite families, and the Houthis seek to revive that ruling.

Abdulrahman Barman, a Yemeni human rights advocate and director of the American Center for Justice, told Arab News that the Houthis abducted a large number of Yemenis in various regions of Dhamar province on Saturday and Sunday and that some of them were abducted for celebrating the revolution or calling on the public to do so as well.

Barman believes the Houthis began their crackdown on the 1962 revolution celebrations days before revolution day to prevent Yemenis from attending large rallies on Thursday.

Raising the Yemen flag and chanting nationalist slogans, Yemenis organized rare large-scale public celebrations of the 1962 revolution in Sanaa and other Houthi-held areas in September last year despite Houthi attempts to disperse them, Barman said.

Yemeni rights groups, including the Musawaah Organization for Human Rights and Freedoms and the Rasd Coalition, condemned the Houthi crackdown on Yemenis celebrating revolution day, urging them to stop arresting people and allow the public to celebrate freely.

This comes as the Geneva-based SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties said in a report released on Saturday, the 10th anniversary of the Houthi military takeover of power, that the Houthis have closed 163 newspapers, magazines and radio stations, as well as blocked 200 websites and arrested or harassed dozens of Yemeni journalists over the past decade.

During that time, the Houthis have detained at least 18,000 Yemenis, including many who have been forcibly disappeared.

Their arbitrary shelling of residential areas in Yemen has killed at least 15,000 civilians and injured more than 34,000, while more than 2 million landmines planted by Yemeni militia in Yemen have killed at least 2,632 people, including 477 children and 168 women, and wounded 3,386, including 730 children and 219 women, according to SAM’s report.

Since September 2014, the Houthis have demolished 713 houses belonging to their opponents and recruited more than 30,000 children.

The Houthis stormed Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Sept. 21, 2014, before spreading across the country, sparking a war that has killed more than 100,000 people, displaced millions, and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.


Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan

Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan
Updated 57 min 34 sec ago
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Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan

Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan
  • “The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said
  • Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque

JERUSALEM: Israel said Thursday that it will implement what it called “safety restrictions” at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins over the weekend.
During Ramadan, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians come to pray at Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam located in East Jerusalem — a sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel.
This year, Ramadan coincides with a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which has largely halted fighting after a devastating war that left tens of thousands dead in the Palestinian territory.
“The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said in an online briefing to journalists.
Last year, amid the Gaza war, Israeli authorities imposed restrictions on visitors coming to Al-Aqsa, particularly on those Palestinians coming from the occupied West Bank.
Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque compound “for security reasons,” while thousands of Israeli police officers were deployed across Jerusalem’s Old City.
Mencer indicated that precautions would be taken again this year.
“What we cannot, of course, and no country would countenance is people seeking to foment violence and attacks on anyone else,” he said, without detailing this year’s police deployment.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is a symbol of Palestinian national identity.
By longstanding convention, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray in the compound, which they revere as the site of their second temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
In recent years, growing numbers of Jewish ultranationalists have defied the rules, including far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who publicly prayed there while serving as national security minister in 2023 and 2024.
The Israeli government has said repeatedly that it intends to uphold the status quo at the compound but Palestinian fears about its future have made it a flashpoint for violence.
Last year, Israel allowed Muslims to worship at Al-Aqsa in the same numbers as in previous year despite the war raging in Gaza.


Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop

Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop
Updated 27 February 2025
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Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop

Israel car ramming attack wounds 13 people at bus stop
  • 13 people including a police officer were wounded
  • Israel’s first responders treated injured people at the site of the incident

JERUSALEM: Israeli police said a Palestinian man rammed a car into a bus stop in the north of the country on Thursday, wounding 13 civilians in an incident they were treating as a “terror” attack.
“At 16:17 today, Israel Police’s emergency dispatch received reports of a ramming attack at Karkur Junction, where a vehicle struck multiple civilians waiting at a bus stop,” police said in a statement.
Israel’s first responders, Magen David Adom, said a team treated injured people at the site of the incident, including a 17-year old girl who was in critical condition.
Police said 13 people, including a police officer, were wounded, and that two of them were in “serious” condition.
The suspect was a “53-year-old Palestinian from the Jenin area, (who) was residing in Israel unlawfully with his family,” the police statement said.
“The circumstances of his presence in Israel are under investigation,” the police said, adding that “preliminary findings indicate that he deliberately targeted civilians waiting at a bus stop.”
Israel’s military launched earlier this year a major offensive in the north of the occupied West Bank, deploying tanks into the area for the first time in 20 years.
Dubbed “Iron Wall” by the Israeli military, the operation came days after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza.
The raids have spanned multiple refugee camps near the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas.
Military operations are commonplace in Jenin’s refugee camp, a bastion of Palestinian militancy.


More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says

More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says
Updated 27 February 2025
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More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says

More than 1,000 Syrians died in airport prison under Assad, report says
  • Grave sites identified using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents

DAMASCUS: More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture or maltreatment at a site that was widely feared, according to a report to be published Thursday tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites.

In the report, the Syria Justice and Accountability Center said it identified the grave sites by using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery and documents photographed at the military airport in the Damascus suburb of Mezzeh after the ouster of President Bashar Assad in December.

Some sites were on the airport grounds. Others were across Damascus.

Two of the sites, one on the Mezzeh airport property and another at a cemetery in Najha, show clear signs of long trenches dug during periods consistent with witness testimony from SJAC.

Shadi Haroun, one of the report’s authors, said he was among the captives. Held over several months in 2011-2012 for organizing protests, he described daily interrogations with physical and psychological torture intended to force him into baseless confessions.

Death came in many forms, he said.

Although detainees saw nothing except their cell walls or the interrogation room, they could hear “occasional shootings, shot by shot, every couple of days.”

Then there were the injuries inflicted by their tormentors.

“A small wound on the foot of one of the detainees, caused by a whipping he received during torture, was left unsterilized or untreated for days, which gradually turned into gangrene and his condition worsened until it reached the point of amputation of the entire foot,” Haroun said, describing a cellmate’s plight.

In addition to obtaining the documents, SJAC and the Association for the Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison interviewed 156 survivors and eight former members of air force intelligence, Syria’s security service that was tasked with the surveillance, imprisonment and killing of regime critics.

The new government has issued a decree forbidding former regime officials from speaking publicly and none were available to comment.

“Although some of the graves mentioned in the report had not been discovered before, the discovery itself does not surprise us, as we know that there are more than 100,000 missing persons in Assad’s prisons who did not come out during the days of liberation in early December,” said a colonel in the new government’s Interior Ministry who identified himself by his military alias, Abu Baker.

“Discovering the fates of those missing persons and searching for more graves is one of the greatest legacies left by the Assad regime,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests spiraled into a full-scale war. Both Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have long been accused by rights groups, foreign governments and war-crimes prosecutors of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.


Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development

Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development
Updated 27 February 2025
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Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development

Sustainable City — Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman sign partnership to advance sustainable urban development
  • As Oman’s largest sustainable urban development, Yiti integrates renewable energy, food production, water and waste recycling, smart mobility and climate-resilient infrastructure to create a “future-ready” community

MUSCAT: The Sustainable City — Yiti, Oman’s flagship sustainable development and the pioneering net zero emissions community, signed a strategic partnership on Thursday with Ahli Islamic Oman bank.

The partnership was formalized at a signing ceremony held on-site at The Sustainable City — Yiti, attended by senior executives from Yiti and Ahli Islamic Oman, along with key stakeholders.

As Oman’s largest sustainable urban development, Yiti integrates renewable energy, food production, water and waste recycling, smart mobility and climate-resilient infrastructure to create a “future-ready” community.

With 96 percent of its infrastructure already completed, the project is progressing toward its full realization by 2026, bringing together residential, commercial, hospitality and educational spaces designed to advance sustainable living.

“With an investment of nearly $1 billion, we are redefining the real estate landscape by integrating sustainability, innovation, and long-term value creation. This collaboration with Ahli reinforces our commitment to responsible growth, ensuring that we deliver a world-class, net-zero emissions community that aligns with Oman’s Vision 2040 and sets a benchmark for sustainable cities worldwide,” said Mohammed Al-Ghufaili, COO of Oman Tourism Development Company (OMRAN) Group and a board member of Yiti.

Yousuf Al-Rawahi, head of Ahli Islamic Oman, said: “Our collaboration with The Sustainable City — Yiti reflects the overall commitment and endeavor to support Sharia-compliant and sustainable investments that align with Oman Vision 2040.

“By providing the needed financial solutions, we empower individuals and businesses to be part of a groundbreaking net-zero emissions community. Together, we are fostering a responsible urban grown society, while ensuring long-term value creation, and contributing to a more sustainable future for many in the Sultanate of Oman.”

Developed by Diamond Developers in collaboration with OMRAN, Yiti spans nearly one million square meters along the Gulf of Oman coastline, and offers smart infrastructure, low-carbon living and sustainable tourism.

The development features a mix of residential, commercial, hospitality, educational spaces, two hotels, alongside essential community infrastructure such as schools, a nursery, an equestrian center, an indoor sports complex and outdoor leisure areas.

It has been designed to achieve net zero emissions by 2040, as a key contributor to Oman’s environmental and economic transformation.


Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved

Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved
Updated 27 February 2025
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Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved

Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved
  • “All groups must lay down their arms and PKK must dissolve itself,” he said in a declaration
  • His words were read out by a delegation of lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish DEM party

ISTANBUL: Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan on Thursday called for his Kurdish militant group to lay down its weapons and dissolve itself in a landmark declaration read out in Istanbul.
“All groups must lay down their arms and PKK must dissolve itself,” he said in a declaration drawn up in his cell on Imrali prison island where he has been held in solitary confinement since 1999.
The call came four months after Ankara offered an olive branch to the 75-year-old who founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has cost tens of thousands of lives.
His words were read out by a delegation of lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish DEM party who visited him earlier on Thursday.
“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” he said.
Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999, there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed which erupted in 1984 and has cost more than 40,000 lives.
The last round of talks collapsed amid violence in 2015.
After that, there was no contact until October when hard-line nationalist MHP leader Devlet Bahceli offered Ocalan a surprise peace gesture if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.