AL-MUKALLA: The death of a Yemeni educational expert and Ministry of Education official in a Houthi-run detention facility was a result of torture, it is being claimed.
Yemeni government officials and human rights activists said the family of Mohammed Naj Khamash, the director general of primary and secondary education at the Ministry of Education, received a call from the Houthis on Tuesday asking them to collect his remains. They were told his death was caused by a heart attack.
The Houthis abducted 55-year-old Khamash from Sanaa in June as the militia launched a surprise crackdown on Yemeni employees of UN agencies, international human rights and aid organizations, diplomatic missions, and education experts.
The Yemeni government’s Ministry of Human Rights office in Sanaa, which is outside Houthi-controlled areas, has disputed that Khamash died of natural causes. Instead they say he was brutally tortured in Sanaa detention facilities and his family prevented from visiting or contacting him.
“We strongly condemn the terrorist Houthi militia’s actions, including the death of abducted Mohammed Naj Khamash, the continuation of physical and psychological torture, and the deliberate neglect and denial of treatment and health care to abductees, which has resulted in the deaths of a number of them in Houthi prisons,” the office said.
Khamash’s death is the latest in a string of mysterious fatalities of Houthi detainees in Sanaa and other areas under their control which Yemeni activists and rights groups say are the result of mistreatment, deplorable conditions, and deprivation of medical care. Sabri Al-Hakimi, a prominent educationist, died in March after being abducted and held in a detention facility in the city.
International charity Save the Children temporarily halted operations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen late last year in an attempt to pressure the organization to explain the death of employee Hisham Al-Hakimi during detention by the militia.
The Houthis continue to hold a number of prominent teachers and educators, including Mohammed Hatem Al-Mekhlafi, a professor of public education at Sanaa University and co-author of the country's primary school curriculum, and Mujeeb Al-Mekhlafi, an educational training expert.
Al-Mekhlafi and other abducted educationalists appeared in videos broadcast by Houthi media, confessing to inserting “American ideas” such as homosexuality and atheism into Yemeni school curricula, persuading Yemeni children to normalize relations with Israel, and recruiting Yemenis for Israeli and American intelligence agencies.
Khamash’s death sparked condemnation from local and international rights groups, who called for stronger international action to pressure the Houthis to release the abductees and end the widespread torture in their detention facilities.
The Geneva-based SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties issued a statement urging the international community to take immediate action to rescue abductees from Houthi prisons.
“SAM urges the international community to take immediate action to rescue detainees in Houthi prisons, emphasizing that the continued occurrence of serious human rights violations, such as torture and ill-treatment, necessitates effective and serious pressure on the Houthis to release detainees and protect their rights,” it read.
On Wednesday, a Houthi drone dropped two bombs on a school in Al-Hanaeh, in Yemen’s southern province of Taiz, injuring two students, according to SABA.
