AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis began questioning a Yemeni UN health worker on Monday after holding him for more than 800 days, as his wife accused his captors of torturing him and attempting to force him to confess to espionage.
Yemeni activists and relatives said the Specialized Criminal Prosecution in Houthi-held Sanaa began questioning Dr. Ali Al-Mudhwahi, a public health consultant with UNICEF, on Monday, prompting activists and lawyers to gather in solidarity with him.
“Dr. Ali Al-Mudhwahi attended the first interrogation session at the Criminal Prosecution after being detained for more than 800 days,” Sanaa-based activist Ahmed Nagi Al-Nabhani said on Facebook.
He said activists and lawyers who attended the session shook hands with Al-Mudhwahi and expressed their support.
In recent years, the Houthis have carried out repeated crackdowns on Yemeni employees of UN and international agencies, as well as foreign embassies, in Sanaa and other areas under their control.
They have accused detainees of spying for Israel and the US, among other offenses.
Dozens of workers have been abducted from their homes or workplaces during the campaigns, drawing condemnation from UN officials and prompting some international organizations to suspend or scale back operations in Houthi-controlled areas.
Safiah Mohammed, Al-Mudhwahi’s wife, who has campaigned on social media for his release, thanked those who attended Monday’s session and expressed solidarity with her husband.
“I extend my sincere thanks, appreciation and gratitude to you, and to all the lawyers and supporters who attended today and stood by Dr. Ali. Thank you for your honorable stance and support during this difficult time,” she said.
In a social media post on Sunday, Mohammed accused the Houthis of torturing her husband and attempting to force him at gunpoint to confess to espionage.
She said that during a phone call, her husband asked her to tell the public that he had been held in an underground cell for 16 months, where he was blindfolded and handcuffed.
She said he could barely hold the phone during their conversation.
According to Mohammed, Al-Mudhwahi said Houthi interrogators repeatedly pressured him to confess to being a spy and to claim that he had been recruited by the World Health Organization.
She said his captors wanted him to claim that vaccinations administered to Yemeni children under the age of 5 were “spy tools” and that he was “a spy recruited by the World Health Organization on behalf of the Zionists to help harm your homeland.”
When he refused, his captors threatened to keep him imprisoned for another 40 or 50 years before allowing him to meet a lawyer, his wife said.
Shortly after Mohammed posted on social media that her husband was due to be questioned and appealed for support, Yemeni activists, lawyers, government officials, relatives and members of the public expressed solidarity with Al-Mudhwahi and called for his immediate release.
The American Center for Justice, a human rights advocacy organization, also called on the Houthis to immediately release him, accusing them of subjecting him to psychological and physical torture.
“The center has documented evidence that Dr. Al-Madwahi was subjected to severe psychological and physical pressure throughout his detention to force him to make coerced confessions,” the organization said in a statement on Monday.
