News - Yemen: The head of the National Committee for Prisoners Affairs Abdul Qadir Al-Murtada said on Wednesday that after Saudi Arabia presented its alleged initiative regarding the release of some Yemeni prisoners, the International Red Cross informed us that it had visited these detainees and stated that they were of multiple nationalities.

“We were unable to receive these detainees in the prisons of the Saudi regime because they are unknown to us and from multiple countries,” Al-Murtada added in an exclusive statement to Al-Masirah.

"Progress in the negotiations with the United Nations regarding prisoners is very slow, despite the fact that we have presented many steps to resolve this humanitarian issue," he stressed, explaining that the delay in implementing the prisoner exchange agreement under the auspices of the United Nations is due to the delay of the Saudi-mercenaries from providing their lists.

He expressed his hope that the United Nations would put pressure on the mercenaries to provide the lists and implement the agreed steps to advance the prisoners' aspect.

“We tried to take advantage of the truce to advance the prisoners' aspect, but unfortunately this has not happened in a concrete way so far.”

Al-Murtada indicated that more than 5,000 prisoners from the Army and Popular Committees were liberated, 95% of whom were liberated through local mediation, and the same number was from the party affiliated with the coalition of aggression.

On Tuesday, the head of the Prisoners’ Affairs Committee 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.

"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, moreover, they are not among our prisoners and are not known to us."

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.