CAIRO: Yemen’s Houthi rebels stormed the headquarters of the United Nations’ Human Rights Office in the capital, Sanaa, seizing documents, furniture and vehicles, a senior UN official said Tuesday.
The seizure was the latest move in a crackdown by the Houthis on people working with the UN, aid agencies and foreign embassies. The crackdown comes as the Iranian-backed rebels have been targeting shipping throughout the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The rebels took over the UN Human Rights Office’s premises in Sanaa on Aug. 3, after forcing UN Yemeni workers to hand over belongings, including documents, furniture and vehicles, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
“Ansar Allah forces must leave the premises and return all assets and belongings immediately,” Turk said, using the official name of the Houthis.
A spokesman for the Houthis didn’t return phone calls and messages requesting comment.
The UN’s Human Rights Office said it had suspended the office’s operations in Sanaa and other Yemeni areas controlled by the Houthis following the June crackdown campaign. But it still operates in the parts of Yemen controlled by the internationally recognized government.
In June, the Houthis detained more than 60 people working with the UN and other NGOs, according to the UN Human Rights Office. Among the detainees were six workers with the Human Rights Office, who joined two of their colleagues detained by the Houthis in November 2021 and August 2023, it said.
Days after the arrest campaign, the rebels said they had arrested members of what they called an “American-Israeli spy network.”
The Houthis issued what they purported to be videotaped confessions by 10 Yemenis, several of whom said they were recruited by the US Embassy in Yemen. The UN Human Rights Office said one of its staffers who was detained earlier appeared in a video in which he was forced to confess to allegations, including of espionage, the office said.
The Houthis’ claims could not be independently verified.
The Houthis have been engaged in a civil war with Yemen’s internationally recognized government since 2014, when they took control of Sanaa and most of the north.
The war in Yemen has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
The rebels have imprisoned thousands of people during the war. And in recent months they intensified their crackdown on dissent at home, including recently sentencing 44 people to death.
Yemen’s Houthis seized UN rights office in Sanaa, UN official says
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Yemen’s Houthis seized UN rights office in Sanaa, UN official says
- Seizure was the latest move in a crackdown by the Houthis on people working with the UN, aid agencies and foreign embassies
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
