Devastating Human Rights Watch (HRW) Report on Yemen

The leading humanitarian NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has just released a report specialized mostly in the northern confines of Yemen whereby an all-out civil war has been taking place against the Al Houthi family of sheikhs and their numerous and determined followers for many long years – with an ominous result for the inhabitants and the environment, the cultural heritage and the country’s possibility to survive united.

At a moment Yemen gets decomposed, being engulfed into different fronts of civil war (in a forthcoming article I will focus on the fierce battles that have been recently delivered in the country’s southern provinces which have been forced to unite with the former Northern Yemen against their will), the HRW Report ‘Disappearances and Arbitrary Arrests in the Armed Conflict with Huthi Rebels in Yemen’ reveals the cruelty of the tyrannical Sunni Pan-Arabist regime of the corporal Ali Abdallah Saleh, who rules the country only due to Wahhabi Saudi and idiotic American support.

In several articles, I will republish the entire report; in this article, I first publish an introductory feature which appeared on the HRW website under title ‘Yemen: Hundreds Unlawfully Arrested in Rebel Conflict’ and the first two parts of the HRW Report ‘Disappearances and Arbitrary Arrests in the Armed Conflict with Huthi Rebels in Yemen’, namely I. Summary and Recommendations (including following chapters: Recommendations, To the government of Yemen, With regard to enforced disappearances, With regard to arbitrary arrest and detention, With regard to freedom of expression and religion, To the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, member states of the European Union, and the United Nations specialized programs, and Methodology) and II. Background (including following units: The war, Sa’da Governorate and the Huthis, The Security forces).

Yemen: Hundreds Unlawfully Arrested in Rebel Conflict
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/10/21/yemen20035.htm

Investigate Arbitrary Detentions and ‘Disappearances’

(Washington, DC, October 24, 2008) – Yemeni security forces have systematically and unlawfully detained several hundred people, including journalists, in the context of the four-year civil war with rebel forces in northern Yemen, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Human Rights Watch urged Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh to establish an independent commission to investigate arbitrary arrests and "disappearances" and to punish those responsible.

The 47-page report, "Disappearances and Arbitrary Arrests in the Armed Conflict with Huthi Rebels in Yemen," documents 62 cases of unlawful and arbitrary arrest in connection with the conflict in northern Yemen that since 2004 has periodically erupted into heavy clashes. Yemeni human rights groups have credibly documented hundreds of cases of unlawful arrests, and in August 2008 the government spoke of more than 1,200 political prisoners. The government has detained some individuals as hostages in order to pressure wanted family members to surrender, while arresting others for publicizing government abuses during the conflict.

President Saleh declared an end to fighting in the northern Sa’da governorate on July 17, 2008, and in August and September he ordered some prisoners released, but dozens remain detained without charge or trial, and some are still unaccounted for.

"Dozens of people who committed no crime are still languishing in Yemeni prisons, months after the president promised to deal with their cases," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Some family members still don’t know if their loved ones who were ‘disappeared’ are dead or alive."

Since the beginning of armed conflict between Huthi rebels and the government in the northern Yemeni governorate of Sa’da in 2004, assorted Yemeni security agencies – Political Security, National Security, and regular criminal investigation departments – have arrested several hundred persons without warrant and failed to charge them with any criminal offense.

The Huthi rebels began as the Zaidi Shi’a religious revivalist movement, the Believing Youth, in the 1990s under the leadership of Husain al-Huthi, from whom they took their name. They took up arms in 2004 after the Yemeni government closed their religious schools.

Those whom the government has arbitrarily arrested comprise a wide range of persons not actively participating in hostilities against government forces. They include people who were effectively held hostage to pressure a wanted family member to surrender or to end their human rights activities. They also include people whom security forces targeted for their religious activism. Others were Zaidis going to or returning from areas of recent fighting, or otherwise suspected of sympathizing with the Huthis. In the most recent round of fighting that erupted in May 2008, security agencies locked up journalists and website writers merely for publishing information about the conflict.

In nearly all the cases, arresting officials did not identify themselves or inform the detainee or his family why he was being arrested and where he was being taken. Families of persons "disappeared" did not know for weeks or months whether their relatives were alive or not or who their captors were. Some still do not know. Even after hostilities ceased in July, security forces continued to arrest people arbitrarily from the conflict areas.

Among those forcibly disappeared was Khalid al-Sharif, a US citizen who returned to Yemen in April 2008 to visit his family. Security forces arrested him on June 16; he only reappeared at Political Security headquarters on August 13 and he remained in detention as of late September 2008. Interior Ministry officials arrested Shaikh Salih Ali Al Wajman, an official mediator in the conflict, on February 15, 2007 because he had written a report unfavorable to the government, and only released him on August 17, 2008.

The government did not respond to a Human Rights Watch letter of September 16, 2008 to Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qurbi inquiring about the fate of 29 named individuals. In the other 33 cases that Human Rights Watch investigated, those concerned preferred to remain anonymous. Yemen’s ambassador to the United States, Abdulwahhab Al-Hajjri, on October 16 told Human Rights Watch that he would assiduously pursue information on those 29 cases.

"Months after the guns fell silent in Sa’da, Yemenis are still in prison without being charged with any crime," said Stork. "President Saleh should take up this opportunity to remedy the injustices committed by his security forces and take immediate steps to ensure these abuses are not repeated."

Disappearances and Arbitrary Arrests in the Armed Conflict with Huthi Rebels in Yemen
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/yemen1008/

Map of Yemen
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/yemen1008/1.htm#_Toc212021092

I. Summary and Recommendations
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/yemen1008/2.htm#_Toc212021093

In the context of recurring armed conflict with Huthi rebels in the northern Sa’da governorate since 2004, Yemen’s security forces have carried out hundreds of arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances of civilians. Since 2007, but especially in the first half of 2008, the extent of arbitrary arrests and "disappearances" expanded, with the government broadening its targets to include persons reporting on the war’s impact on civilians.

After negotiations, on July 17, 2008 hostilities in the latest round of fighting ceased, and on August 17 Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced the release of some prisoners. Nevertheless, tens if not hundreds of persons remain in detention, and new arrests have taken place. As documented in this report, the ease and impunity with which security forces arbitrarily arrest and sometimes "disappear" persons warrants a prompt, thorough and independent investigation, and greatly enhanced judicial oversight to prevent such violations from recurring in the future. Those found responsible for arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances, whatever their position or rank, should be held to account.

The armed conflict between Yemeni government forces and Huthi rebels began in 2004. Husain al-Huthi founded the Believing Youth movement in the 1990s, aimed at reviving Zaidi Islam, a branch of Shi’ism found mainly in Yemen, to counter growing fundamentalist Sunni trends in the northern Yemeni governorates where Zaidis dominate. The conflict began as isolated clashes of the Believing Youth movement (Huthis) with the army in Sa’da. Thereafter, anti-Israel and anti-US demonstrations led by Huthis in San’a, Yemen’s capital, which embarrassed the government after it had embraced US counter-terrorism efforts, led to arrests of Huthis and further clashes with them.

Zaidi Hashemites, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, led the Huthi movement. They had ruled Yemen for a millennium and comprised the state’s religious and governing elite until the army-led revolution in 1962, also supported by some Zaidi tribes, deposed them. Zaidi Hashemites are especially prominent in the Sa’da area, where there has not historically been a significant government law enforcement presence.

Since the clashes of 2004 there have been five periods of sustained fighting, mostly in the countryside, but in June 2008 escalating to the outskirts of San’a. So far an estimated 130,000 persons have been displaced from their homes in the northern governorates, although some may have returned since July 2008.

Over the decade preceding the outbreak of the conflict, Yemen made some advances in the rule of law, especially by setting out rights in the constitution and other legislation, such as the penal code and criminal procedure code. However, these have been eroded by hundreds of enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests, mainly in the context of the Huthi rebellion but also relating to the government’s domestic counter-terrorism efforts and its crackdown on social unrest in southern Yemen. Estimates of the numbers of persons disappeared or detained vary—Yemeni human rights organizations have documented tens of disappeared, and hundreds arbitrarily arrested at various stages since 2004. In August 2008, officials spoke of approximately 1,200 political prisoners remaining detained, some 130 of whom were gradually being released.

Human Rights Watch investigated 62 cases of disappearance and arbitrary arrest linked to the Huthi rebellion for this report. In nearly all of the cases, arresting officials did not identify themselves or inform the detainee or his family why he was being arrested and where he was being taken. The families of persons forcibly disappeared did not know for weeks or months after their arrest whether their loved ones were alive or not, who their captors were, or where they were being held. Some still do not know.

Most detainees, when they reappeared, did so at the Political Security Organization, the security and intelligence agency directly linked to the office of President Saleh, after having been effectively "disappeared" for weeks or months without acknowledgement of their location. Some remain missing—the earliest unresolved enforced disappearance investigated by Human Rights Watch dates back to June 2007.

Those arbitrarily arrested included a wide range of persons, including many who were not actively participating in hostilities against government forces. They can be grouped into three categories. First are persons effectively held hostage to pressure a wanted family member to surrender or end their human rights activities. Second are Hashemites, adherents of Zaidi Shi’ism who may have been targeted by the security forces on the basis of their religious activism. Third are Zaidis going to or returning from areas of recent fighting between the army and Huthi rebels, or who are otherwise suspected of sympathizing with them.

A new and separate category which has emerged over the past two years is that of persons arbitrarily arrested for publishing information about the armed conflict, including journalists and website writers.

The government has also cracked down on Hashemite preachers and scholars in Zaidi religious institutions and mosques, apparently conflating the religious motivations that gave rise to the original Believing Youth movement with armed rebellion. Human Rights Watch documented 14 cases of arrests where Hashemite identity or one’s profession as a Hashemite scholar or preacher appeared to be the paramount reason for the arrest. Even activities such as teenagers visiting Zaidi summer camps and attending religious lectures have raised suspicion with the authorities.

In 2008 tight government control over information about the conflict characterized the war. The government attempted to prevent details of the conflict from becoming public by preventing journalists and humanitarian workers from going to the conflict zone, by disconnecting all but a select number of mobile telephone numbers, by threatening journalists with reprisal if they report on the conflict, and by arresting persons who transmitted information, or who could have information, about the conflict because they had recently been to or fled the area.

The government is particularly sensitive to videos and photographs of the war. Political Security detained a 13-year-old child at the airport for having CDs of Huthi rebels. He remained in incommunicado detention for one and a half months, and was released only after seven months.

The government in February 2007 and July 2008 has even arrested persons it had officially appointed to mediate between itself and the Huthis, in an attempt to suppress their activities, when they were about to criticize the government’s commitment to come to a peaceful solution.

Despite hostilities ceasing in July 2008, security forces continued to arbitrarily arrest persons from the conflict areas. Displaced persons in the capital remained extremely fearful of arrest. Three groups of internally displaced persons from Sa’da governorate declined to meet with Human Rights Watch because of fears for their own safety. Earlier in 2008, the government arrested persons who had attempted to visit recent conflict areas to assess damage to their property or to bring trapped relatives to safety.

The politics of the Huthi-government conflict reach beyond the boundaries of the affected areas. Security forces have also arrested persons of Iranian origin, or suspected of links with Iran or its embassy. The Yemeni government has in the past accused Iran of providing financial and political support to the Huthi rebels.

This report does not address allegations of torture that Yemeni human rights organizations have made concerning some of the cases Human Rights Watch investigated. We did not receive first-hand information relating to torture, but enforced disappearances greatly heighten the risk of torture, and allegations of physical or mental pain detainees suffered at hands of the captors, jailors or interrogators should form an integral part of any investigation into "disappearances" and arbitrary arrests.

Human Rights Watch urges the government of Yemen to take immediate measures to end the practice of enforced disappearances, release all persons arbitrarily arrested and detained, and promptly try persons charged with a cognizable criminal offense before a court that meets international fair trial standards. The government should also put an end to the violation of the rights to freedom of expression and religion. The authorities should also investigate and discipline or prosecute as appropriate all members of the security forces responsible for "disappearances" and arbitrary arrests. Human Rights Watch further recommends that the international community closely monitor Yemen’s progress in those areas.

Recommendations

To the government of Yemen:

With regard to enforced disappearances

- Establish an independent commission with full authority to investigate all cases of suspected enforced disappearance since the outbreak of armed conflict with Huthi rebels in 2004. The commission should determine who ordered and carried out the arrest and detention, who prevented the detainee from maintaining contact with the outside world, and who was informed about this prohibition.

- Compensate victims of enforced disappearances promptly and adequately in view of the gravity of the crime.

- Prosecute officials and members of the security forces implicated in enforced disappearances, and bar their future employment in the security services.

- Introduce legislation making enforced disappearances a criminal offense punishable by penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime.

- Institute thorough independent judicial oversight of the arrests and detention of persons by the security services to prevent enforced disappearances in the future.

- Ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

- Clarify in law the powers of arrest and detention of the Political Security Organization and National Security, and establish independent judicial oversight over their places of detention.

With regard to arbitrary arrest and detention

- Immediately release all persons held as hostages for the purpose of compelling the surrender or compliance of wanted relatives.

- Immediately release all persons held solely for possessing or transmitting information that is protected under international human rights law.

- Immediately prosecute or release all persons held for prolonged periods without trial.

- Ensure no child is detained except as a last resort and for the shortest possible time, consistent with juvenile justice standards. Ensure children are not held in adult detention centers.

- Empower a judicial committee to review the cases of all remaining detainees at the Political Security agency and the National Security agency to determine the legality of their detention.

- Investigate and discipline or prosecute as appropriate security officials responsible for arbitrary arrests, including by failing to secure a necessary arrest warrant, failing to present detainees to the courts for charge.

- Strengthen judicial oversight over the practice of arrest and detention.

With regard to freedom of expression and religion

- Review and amend legislation to ensure that Yemeni law does not criminalize protected forms of expression and exchange of information, including through electronic media and contact with international human rights organizations.

- Allow religious study centers to teach and study freely.

To the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, member states of the European Union, and the United Nations specialized programs:

- Support the good offices of mediators to ensure that releases of prisoners agreed between the government of Yemen and the Huthi rebels take place.

- Support diplomatically the establishment of a commission tasked with investigating enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests and provide Yemen’s government with technical expertise for its work.

- Consider deploying a United Nations mission tasked with monitoring the human rights situation in the northern governorates.

Methodology

Two Human Rights Watch researchers and a consultant visited Yemen for two and a half weeks in July 2008. We conducted 95 interviews with victims and eyewitnesses of alleged human rights violations, local journalists, human rights activists, intellectuals and academics, politicians, and government officials. Of these interviews, 35 concerned cases of arrest and detention, detailing 62 individual cases, plus nine accounts of large groups of persons arrested in the context of the war. Among those we interviewed were former detainees, families of detainees, and others with first-hand knowledge of arrests.

In most cases, independent accounts in the media or by human rights organizations confirmed the detention of a person and, occasionally, the reasons for detention. These include the detention of Lu’ai al-Mu’ayyad, Yasir al-Wazir, Abd al-Ilah al-Mahdi, Muhammad Muftah, and Isma’il Ghanima.

Interlocutors who helped Human Rights Watch contact victims and persons with firsthand knowledge about arrests, or from the conflict area, included local human rights organizations and members of the Socialist Party, the Islah Party, the Haqq Party (largely representing Zaidis), and the ruling General People’s Congress. We consulted documentation by human rights groups, including the Dialogue (Hewar) Forum, the Yemeni Organization for the Defense of Democratic Rights and Freedoms, the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms (HOOD), the Yemen Observatory for Human Rights, including lists of persons alleged to be forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily arrested. We had access to extensive court documentation relating to the arrests and trials of groups of alleged Huthi sympathizers and supporters in 2004-2005 and in 2007-2008.

We conducted most interviews in Arabic; two Yemenis, a woman and a man, interpreted for one researcher and the consultant; the third researcher spoke in Arabic. We conducted all but two interviews in the capital, San’a. We are grateful to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Human Rights for promptly accommodating our requests to meet them. While in Yemen, Human Rights Watch requested—by telephone on July 23 and in writing on July 28—official permission to travel to Sa’da, but we received no response from the government.

Where persons so requested, we have concealed their identities, and used pseudonyms consisting only of a first name.

II. Background
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/yemen1008/3.htm#_Toc212021096

Yemen is a country of 22 million people slightly larger than France, on the southwestern corner of the Arabian peninsula across the Red Sea from the Horn of Africa. The World Bank estimated Yemen’s annual per capita gross domestic product at US$520 in 2003. That year, Yemen ranked 151st out of 177 countries on the Human Development Index.1 Three quarters of Yemenis live in rural areas.

In 1962, an army coup ended the rule of the Zaidi imamate, establishing a republican regime (Yemen Arab Republic, or YAR) in what was known as North Yemen. A civil war in the 1960s drew in Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the republican and imamate sides respectively. What was then South Yemen had been a British protectorate until it achieved independence as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in November 1967. The two Yemens united as the Republic of Yemen in 1990.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh came to power in the YAR in 1978, and continued as president of the Republic of Yemen after unification. A civil war that broke out between forces of the former north and south from May to July 1994 ended with the victory of the north. Despite the turmoil, democratic development, the emergence of civil society and legal reform continued throughout the 1990s. Yemen is due to hold its fourth parliamentary elections since unification in April 2009. A presidential election in 2006 gave Saleh another seven years in office, making him one of the world’s longest-ruling leaders.

Since siding with the United States in its counter-terrorism efforts after September 11, 2001, Yemen’s gains in respect for the rule of law and civil rights have eroded. Arrests without charge of suspected al Qaeda members since 2002, and arrests and suppression of labor unrest and free speech in the south increased after 2006.

The war

Armed conflict between Huthi rebels and government forces has erupted into sustained clashes on five occasions between 2004 and 2008.2 The government reportedly has used fighter jets, tanks, and artillery to attack rebel hideouts in the mountains as well as in some towns. Rebels are said to have used heavy artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Most fighting has taken place in the countryside, but escalated into urban areas during the fifth period in 2008.3 The clashes have primarily occurred in the northern Sa’da governorate, bordering Saudi Arabia, but spread to ‘Amran and Hajja governorates, even reaching Bani Hushaish on the outskirts of San’a in June 2008.

In July 2008, an estimated 17,000 to 20,000 persons displaced by the war lived in seven camps around Sa’da city, and an estimated further 40,000 persons lived with relatives inside the town. In August 2008, the UN humanitarian affairs agency reported a total of 130,000 persons displaced as a result of conflict in Sa’da governorate.4

Since 2004, the government has initiated five mediation committees, staffed by important personalities, representatives of political parties, and government officials in an effort to come to a negotiated solution to the conflict. These committees have at times achieved ceasefire agreements, but at various times the government has also arrested mediators who were critical of the government. In 2007 the government of Qatar offered its mediation services; the parties reached a verbal agreement in June 2007, which was finalized and signed in February 2008. However, in May 2008 a bomb explosion in a mosque in Sa’da planted by unknown parties prompted renewed heavy fighting that ended when President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced a halt to hostilities on July 17, 2008.

The government imposed an information blackout during the fighting in 2007 and 2008, and in 2008 blocked the movement of people and goods into and out of Sa’da governorate. Huthi rebels and local tribes fighting with the government also imposed their own checkpoints granting selective access. The actions of all sides have restricted humanitarian access.

Sa’da Governorate and the Huthis

The conflict mainly takes place in Sa’da governorate, but fighting has also occurred in other northern areas. Northern governorates are populated predominantly by adherents of the Zaidi strand of Shi’a Islam whose leaders (imams) ruled Yemen for a millennium until a military-led revolution deposed them in 1962. The Sa’da, ‘Amran and Hajja governorates are also home to powerful tribes, especially the Hashid and Bakil, who also adhere to the Zaidi sect. Disaffected Zaidi tribesmen also participated in the revolution of 1962. Tribesmen traditionally carry arms, and central governments have never had a significant military or law enforcement presence in these tribal areas.

Sunnis following the Shafi’i school of thought are a majority in Yemen, living mostly in the southern and central parts and the Red Sea coast; Zaidi Shi’a are a large minority, living mostly in the northern highlands.5

Although Zaidis are largely reconciled with a republican state, strict Zaidi doctrine holds that the imam, the religious and secular leader, has to be a Hashemite, a term used for the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.6 Yemeni Hashemites are bound by family rather than tribe, setting them apart from Zaidi tribes. During the time of the Zaidi imamate, Hashemites formed the religious and governing elite.

Political and religious developments underlie the tensions that eventually led to the current conflict. For one, Yemenis (often Zaidis) returning to Sa’da from working in Saudi Arabia brought with them Sunni Wahhabi religious leanings. Muqbil al-Wadi’i, originally a Zaidi, opened the Dammaj school in Sa’da, in the Zaidi heartland, in the early 1980s to propogate Wahhabi thought, a puritanical interpretation of Islam regarding daily conduct of Muslims that prevails in neighboring Saudi Arabia and is typically hostile to Shi’a doctrines. Furthermore, the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood movement in Yemen established Scientific Institutes under the Ministry of Education that reached many Yemenis before the authorities closed them in the late 1990s. After the unification of north and south Yemen in 1990 and the advent of multi-party elections, the Islah Party, which represents the political interests of the Muslim Brotherhood but also includes some tribal and Zaidi interests, emerged as the largest opposition party.7

To counter encroaching Sunni ideological currents and a steady weakening of Zaidi religious and Hashmite social influence, in the 1990s Zaidis began to set up their own religious schools and to revive the tradition of Zaidi religious study at mosques and study centers in the area. Unlike the Scientific Institutes, these schools were not part of the government education system. Wary of the growing Sunni influence in Yemen’s Zaidi areas, the government in the 1990s reportedly began to financially support Husain al-Huthi and his Believing Youth movement, dedicated to Zaidi religious revivalism. Badr al-Din al-Huthi, the father of Husain, is considered one of three most influential Zaidi scholars in Yemen.8

The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, followed by the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in July-August 2006 and growing tension between Iran and the US, boosted perceptions of Shi’ism as a powerful political force. Starting in 2003, the Huthis began to raise slogans of "Death to Israel, death to America" in demonstrations following Friday prayers at the Great Mosque in San’a’s old city center, and the government arrested up to 640 demonstrators in June 2004 with the army pursuing the capture of Husain al-Huthi.9

The Security forces

There are several security agencies in Yemen, answering to different parts of the government. Their powers and remits overlap, leading to public uncertainty about which agency might be responsible for a particular human rights violation.

A 1980 presidential order established Central Security, tasking the agency with responsibilities ranging from ensuring the safety of property and persons to border patrolling and counter-terrorism.10 Central Security is under the Minister of Interior’s direct authority.11

Also under the Interior Ministry are the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) responsible for non-political crimes and a counter-terrorism unit. However, both the CID and the counter-terrorism unit have carried out arrests of journalists, mosque preachers, and others for alleged political offenses.

Political Security is Yemen’s domestic intelligence agency established by decree 121 in 1992 under the name Central Agency for Political Security. Its powers of arrest and detention are by decree and not spelled out in law, and its detention facilities do not fall within the declared places of detention, as required by the Yemeni constitution.12 The agency reports directly to President Saleh.

National Security, an agency established by decree 262 in 2002, mainly prepares analyses and provides advice to the government. A dispute over competency and authority between it and Political Security led National Security to establish its own detention centers, also undeclared and therefore outside the framework of Yemeni law. Its powers of arrest and detention are similarly by decree and not spelled out in law.13

Yemen’s judiciary provides no effective oversight over the legality of arrests and detentions. National Security and Political Security in particular do not abide by legal requirements that officials conduct arrests only pursuant to a judicial warrant, present suspects for charge within 24 hours of arrest, and release prisoners whose sentences have expired.

The Specialized Criminal Court, established by law in 1999 to try crimes defined in the Quran and included in the penal code, such as highway robbery (حرابة), and other statutory offenses, including abduction of foreigners, harming oil installations, theft by armed groups of means of transportation, membership in an armed group seeking to attack public property or citizens, and attacking members of the judiciary or abducting officials or their family members. In 2004, a new law broadened the court’s jurisdiction to include vague crimes against national security.14 The court is not independent and its trials do not meet international standards of fairness.

Notes

1 World Bank, "Yemen," http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/MENAEXT/YEMENEXTN/0,,menuPK:310170~pagePK:141159~piPK:141110~theSitePK:310165,00.html (accessed October 2, 2008).

2 The so-called five "wars" occurred in the following periods: June 18, 2004–September 10, 2004; March 19, 2005 –April 12, 2005; July 12, 2005–February 28, 2006; February 27, 2007–June 14 or 15, 2007; May 4 or 5, 2008–July 17, 2008.

3 See: Iris Glosemeyer, "Local Conflict, Global Spin: An Uprising in the Yemeni Highlands," Middle East Report 232 (Fall 2004), and Sarah Phillips, "Foreboding About the Future in Yemen," Middle East Report Online, April 3, 2006 http://www.merip.org/mero/mero040306.html (accessed September 4, 2008).

4 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "Humanitarian Update. June 2008 Yemen," July 5, 2008 http://ochaonline.un.org/Default.aspx?alias=ochaonline.un.org/romenaca (accessed September 4, 2008).

5 "Yemen: Coping with Terrorism and Violence in a Fragile State," International Crisis Group Middle East Report no 8, Amman/Brussels, January 8, 2003 http://www.crisisgroup.org/library/documents/report_archive/A400863_08012003.pdf (accessed September 4, 2008), p.18.

6 Hashemites can be Sunni or Shi’a Muslims. In Yemen, most Hashemites are Zaidi, and more narrowly defined as descendants of Fatima’s marriage to Ali ibn Abi Talib, respectively the Prophet’s daughter and his cousin, who later became the leader of the Muslim community.

7 See: Gabriele vom Bruck, "Disputing Descent-Based Authority in the Idiom of Religion: The Case of the Republic of Yemen," Die Welt des Islams, vol. 38 no 2, 1998, pp. 149-191, p.10

8 Human Rights Watch interview with Khalid al-Anisi, executive director, HOOD, San’a, July 17, 2008.

9 Hassan Al-Zaidi, "Sa’adah Violence Continues… Al-Hothy Remains in a Stronghold in "Mran" Mountains Amidst Heavy Fighting," Yemen Times, June 24, 2004, http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=749&p=front&a=1 (accessed September 4, 2008).

10 Republican Decision no 107, Ministry of Interior, 1980, published on the website of the Central Security Forces, http://www.yemencsf.org/ (accessed August 19, 2008).

11 Organizational Regulation of the Ministry of Interior , Ministry of Interior, 1995 www.police-info.gov.ye/laws/Min01.htm (accessed August 19.2008).

12 Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Qasim, lawyer, San’a, September 2, 2008. According to information Human Rights Watch obtained, the Political Security agency’s places of detention are also not authorized as required by the constitution.

13 "Republican Decision on the Establishment of the National Security Agency by the Republic of Yemen," President of the Republic, August 6, 2002. Article 5.2. provides National Security officers the powers of judicial arrest officers. Article 84 of Yemen’s law of Criminal Procedure lists prosecutors, governors, police officers and others as "judicial arrest officers,"and further specifies that "all officers who have been given the quality of judicial arrest officers by law" (emphasis added) may be added to the list. "Republican Decision on Law no 13 of Year 1994 Regarding Criminal Procedures," President of the Republic, art. 84.9. Yemen’s constitution prohibits detention "in any place not authorized under the Prisons Administration law." Constitution of the Republic of Yemen, 2001, art.48.b.

14 Republican Decision on Law no 391 for the Year 1999 Regarding the Specialized Criminal Court, art.3, and Republican Decision on Law no 8 for the Year 2004 Regarding the Specialized Criminal Court, art.1.

Note
Picture: HRW Report on Yemen – the cover