News - Yemen: Head of the Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, Abdulqadir Al-Murtadha, called on the countries leading the aggression against Yemen to stop trading and bidding on the prisoners’ issue, as it is a completely humanitarian issue.

In a statement to Saba News Agency, Al-Murtadha said, "After Saudi Arabia claimed to present an initiative to release some of our prisoners, we were informed of a list that includes a number of names, contrary to what they announced, and more than that, they are not among our prisoners and are not known to us."

Earlier, The National Committee for Prisoners Affairs submitted a new offer to the US-Saudi aggression through the United Nations, due to the delay in implementing the prisoner exchange agreement.

"Due to the delay in the implementation of the prisoner exchange agreement, we submitted a new offer to the Saudi-led aggression through the United Nations," the head of the Prisoners’ Committee, Abdulqadir Al-Mortadha, said on Sunday.

Al-Murtadha explained that the offer made to the United Nations stipulates the release of 200 prisoners from each party before the blessed Eid al-Fitr. He considered this offer a positive prologue to the full implementation of the agreement and that the committee is waiting for the response of the countries of aggression, which is hoped will be positive.

The Prisoners’ Committee had announced late March the agreement with the US-Saudi aggression on a prisoner exchange deal through the UN to release 1,400 prisoners of the Army and Popular Committees, in return for 823 from the other side. The agreement incoulds 16 Saudi prisoners and three Sudanese, in addition to Nasser Mansour Hadi and Mahmoud Al-Subaihi. However, the other party is still procrastinating without implementing what was agreed upon.

More than a year has passed since the implementation of the only prisoner exchange deal under the auspices of the United Nations. After that it was unable to implement any new deal due to the obstruction of the US-Saudi aggression and its mercenaries from implementing the rest of the signed agreements, in addition to the clear UN inability to move this humanitarian issue.

In the face of the obstacles that the aggression places in the way of implementing prisoner exchange agreements, including those carried out under the auspices of the United Nations, the Prisoners’ Affairs Committee seeks exchanges through local mediation, but the aggression is trying to close this door as well.

The mercenaries of the aggression had received strict Saudi directives to prevent local exchanges since March 2021, and as a result, the National Committee for Prisoners' Affairs was only able to carry out some individual exchanges.

Last June, the Head of the National Committee for Prisoners' Affairs revealed new Saudi directives to mercenaries to stop all locally agreed exchanges. He explained that the Saudi directives to its mercenaries led to the suspension of seven prisoner swap deals on several fronts, including 400 prisoners from both sides.

After a period of delay, the forces of aggression carried out in mid-October 2020 a swap deal that included hundreds of prisoners from both sides under an agreement signed after negotiations hosted by Switzerland.

A Saudi-led coalition, which receives arms and intelligence from Western countries, waged war against Yemen in March 2015 to restore power to the country’s Riyadh-friendly former officials. The war and a simultaneous siege that the US-Saudi-led coalition has been enforcing on the country has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis.

The invasion has pushed entire Yemen close to the brink of outright famine, turning the country into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

A UN-backed agreement, which has been reached between the warring sides during a round of UN-sponsored peace negotiations in Sweden in December 2018, could not commit to release all for all prisoners.