AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthi militia are preparing to prosecute Abdul Wahab Qatran, a prominent and outspoken judge, on charges of denigrating their leader and publishing false news, a Sanaa-based lawyer told Arab News on Monday. 

Abdul Majeed Sabra, a Yemeni lawyer, said that the Houthi-run Specialized Criminal Prosecution in Sanaa will begin questioning Qatran on Tuesday after the Houthi security and intelligence service referred him to the court, accusing him of disseminating rumors, fake news, and inflammatory information about the militia’s leaders.

“The case has been sent to the prosecution for further investigation tomorrow. If he is brought in, the prosecution will investigate and either submit him to trial by indictment or rule that there is no grounds for initiating a case, which means he will be released,” Sabra said. 

Armed Houthis surrounded and broke into Qatran’s home in Sanaa in January, destroying personal documents and furnishings. 

The judge was abducted and taken to a security and intelligence agency detention center, where he was held in solitary confinement without access to medical care, a lawyer, or contact with his family. 

Qatran was eventually allowed to call his family, who reported that he had been secluded and was “dying” as a result of isolation. 

The judge was seized after criticizing the Houthis for human rights violations and failing to pay public workers. Shortly before his abduction he voiced sympathy for a journalist who was attacked and beaten by the militia in Sanaa.

In February, the Houthis’ Supreme Judicial Council stripped Qatran of immunity and ordered that he be punished for breaking the law.

His captors refused repeated requests from his family to visit him and provide him with his medications.

News that the Houthis were planning to try Qatran provoked an outcry from Yemeni activists and international rights groups, which demanded that the militia halt the prosecution and release him. 

The Geneva-based SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties on Monday called the trial a “dangerous development,” and accused the Houthis of attempting to suppress the last outspoken citizens who live in regions under their control.

SAM said it “considers the Houthi group solely accountable for Judge Qatran’s safety and urges them to free him immediately.”

In a statement, it also called on the militia to “stop its actions that infringe people’s fundamental rights, particularly freedom of thought and speech.”

Meanwhile, the US Central Command said that its forces destroyed a drone launched by the Houthis over the Red Sea early on Sunday, the latest in a series of clashes between the Houthis and the US-led marine coalition.

The militia have not claimed to have struck any ships in international waters off Yemen or in the Indian Ocean in the last 48 hours.

Since November, the Houthis have seized a commercial ship in the Red Sea, sunk another in the same shipping lane, and fired hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at international commercial and naval ships.

The militia claims its actions are in support of Palestinians under attack by Israel in Gaza.

At the same time, the UN Mission to Support the Hodeidah Agreement said on Sunday that four land mine explosions killed two civilians and injured four in April in three districts of the Red Sea province of Hodeidah.

This takes the total number of civilian casualties from land mines to 34, with 13 killed since the beginning of the year.

Human Rights Watch said last week that thousands of land mines laid by the Houthis continue to kill and maim people throughout Yemen. 

Explosive devices also “poison fields,” leaving farmland unusable, it said.