Nose piercing, removal of nails: Practices by Daesh against Houthi militias in Yemen

Ali Rajab

Yemenis live in a state of terror, under the control of the Houthi terrorist militias, and the crimes of the militia against the Yemenis, which are similar to the criminal practices of the Daesh terrorist organization. The armed militia practices the worst forms of torture and abuse against the Yemeni people in clear violation of human rights.

Many human rights reports have documented the crimes of the Houthi militia, which lives under a hardline militia seeking to restore the clerical rule to Yemen, according to senior Yemeni political analyst Ali al-Bekhiti in his tweets.

Yemen has become one of the world’s most violently violated human rights country since the Houthis seized control of Sana’a on September 21, 2014. The militia committed systematic violations of international human rights law. Yemeni Human Rights Minister Mohammed Askar revealed that the total number of dead, wounded and abducted people in Yemen during the period between September 2014 and September 2018, 67,000 people were displaced by militia abuses.

In a press conference last Saturday in the city of Taiz on the Red Sea coast, the Association of the Mothers of the Kidnapped in Yemen revealed the crimes of al-Houthis against the detainees in the militia prisons and the methods of torture used against the detainees, pointing out that the most prominent charges against these detainees are espionage for the Arab Coalition to support legitimacy in Yemen, and the United States of America. These are loose crimes used by Houthis to get rid of its opponents, and also to instill terror in the hearts of the Yemeni people.

There were 950 cases of arrests and enforced disappearances in Yemen, most of them in areas under Houthi’s control, with 144 people missing in Sana’a alone, 121 in Hodeidah, 88 in Idlib, 87 in Dhamar and 80 in Taiz, and the rest of the cases were distributed to other governorates.

Imitating Daesh brutality

One of the brutal methods of torture observed in the report of the Association of the Mothers of Kidnappers and which is similar to the practices of Daesh, is the introduction of clothes-sewing piercings into the noses of the abductors, burning inside the spines until their skin melts, beating with rifle butts and preventing the detainees from using the toilets.

A report issued by the Yemeni Coalition to Monitor Human Rights Violations, from December 2014 to December 2016, which was obtained by the Reference revealed the horrific torture stories of 203 cases and the tools of the militia in torture and murder, primarily beatings with wooden sticks and pistols as well as punching on the eye, chest, abdomen, joints, slap on the face and ear, sudden cold water splashing on the body after torture, standing on one foot for several hours.

The report also monitored the torture tools used by al-Houthi organization, extinguishing the cigarette butts in detainees’ bodies and threatening them to sit on flasks or sharp objects, remove nails with iron clasps, hit the head against the wall, as well as deprivation of eating and sleeping, Abuse of them.

Among the methods of torture is the threat of transferring detainees to military sites and weapons stores and using them as human shields in front of strikes by Arab coalition aircraft, as was the case in Mount Hermon, Dhamar governorate, of carrying out a mock trial of some of the detainees and reciting the death sentence after being forced to wear the uniform.

The National Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations in Yemen also pointed out that dozens of cases reached the point of death as a result of torture by the Houthi militia.

The large number of arrests and enforced disappearances led to an international movement through UN Security Council Resolution 2216 (2015) of the Huthi militias to quickly release the two subjects under house arrest and arbitrary detention, including Minister of Defense Major General Mahmoud al-Subaihi and leaders Nasser Mansour Hadi and Faisal Rajab.