AL-MUKALLA: A Yemeni government soldier has died of torture inside a Houthi detention facility in Sanaa, the fourth confirmed prisoner dying as a result of torture in less than a month, Yemeni government officials and activists said.
The Houthis recently requested that the family of Yanouf Hassan Ali Al-Batenah collect his remains without providing details regarding the cause of death. Al-Batenah, a soldier of the Yemeni army’s 7th Military Region, was seized by the Houthis in November 2020 while fighting with Yemeni government troops in the Mas area in the province of Marib.
For three years, the Houthis had forcefully disappeared the Yemeni soldier and refused his family’s repeated requests to see him or learn his location. Yemeni human rights advocates and authorities reported that the 26-year-old soldier was mercilessly tortured to death in a notorious Houthi intelligence jail in Sanaa. Al-Batenah’s death occurred only days after the Houthis said that Yemeni government soldier Mohammed Ahmed Wahban, who was captured by the Houthis during the same fight in Mas, committed suicide inside the military prison in Sanaa by hanging himself.
Yemeni activists, citing a Houthi death sentence against him, contradicted the Houthis’ assertions, saying that the Houthis brutally tortured and murdered Wahban. — Aljazeera
