Corona knocks on Yemen’s door as Houthis delay prisoner exchange deal

Eslam Mohamed

Despite the global spread of the novel corona virus and fears of it spreading in Yemen due to the lack of health care in many areas, the terrorist Houthi militia is delaying the implementation of a prisoner exchange deal with the legitimate government, creating various arguments for the delay and the failure of the Stockholm agreement.

Houthi delay

Yemen’s Deputy Minister of Human Rights Maged Fadail accused the Houthis of making impossible demands, such as seeking the release of fake and non-existent names, in order to thwart the agreement.

Despite this, the militia is delaying the implementation of the exchange, despite the announcement by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Office of the United Nations Envoy to Yemen that the two parties have agreed on a detailed plan for the first large-scale official exchange. According to the legitimate government, the first stage of the release plan that was agreed to with the militia would include the release of 1,420 prisoners and detainees.

Yemeni Minister of Information Muammar al-Iryani sent requests to UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths to act urgently and press the Houthis to release all captives. Meanwhile, Abdul Qader al-Murtada, the chief Houthi prisoner release negotiator, said that Nasser Mansur Hadi, brother of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, will be in the second part of the prisoner exchange deal and that he will not be released if the names requested by the militia are released, including the fake names.

Houthi hypocrisy

For his part, Brigadier General Tareq Saleh, commander of the Yemeni coalition forces affiliated with the legitimate government, accused the Houthis of procrastinating, considering their repeated talk about releasing prisoners without action as “hypocrisy”.

The legitimate Yemeni government, led by President Hadi, has formally accused the Houthis of blocking the agreement that the government insists on implementing so as to evacuate all the country’s prisoners from the prisons in light of the corona pandemic, which poses a great danger to the lives of all detainees, especially those who are sick or elderly.

This comes as the first case of corona in Yemen was discovered, as health authorities at a port in Yemen’s eastern Al-Mahra Governorate, adjacent to Oman, detained a Pakistani truck driver transporting goods between the two countries due to being infected with the virus.

It is worth noting that the legitimate government closed all ports to travelers, but kept them open for the movement of trucks and relief work, as part of the country’s preventive measures to confront the pandemic. There have been no cases of infection recorded in Yemen, according to World Health Organization, except for the Pakistani driver who was discovered at a border crossing.