Almasirah:Prisoners’ Affairs Committee Reveals fallacy of So-called Riyadh’s Initiative

Prisoners’ Affairs Committee Reveals fallacy of So-called Riyadh’s Initiative

News - Yemen: The National Committee for Prisoners Affairs confirmed that after the Saudi regime announced the release of 163 prisoners from the Army and Popular Committees, contact was made with the International Committee of the Red Cross to make the necessary arrangements in this regard.

"After three days of the announcement, we met with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, after their visit to the detainees, which were 126 detainees only, and not 163 as announced by the Saudi regime" The committee said in a statement.

The statement added, "We received the names lists from them, matched them with our database of prisoners, and we found that all detainees are not prisoners of war, except for only five of them and four fishermen who were kidnapped from the Red Sea."

It continued, "Although we welcome the release of any Yemeni, they must coordinate with the concerned authorities in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates and the Ministry of Human Rights."

The statement clarified that among the detainees are nine foreigners of African nationalities with whom we have no connection, stressing that the National Committee for Prisoners' Affairs is concerned with following up and liberating all prisoners of the Yemeni Army and Committees.

The Prisoners’ Affairs Committee also confirmed that the prisoners’ issue is a humanitarian one, which should not be exploited for bids and blackmail, pointing out that we cannot allow the Saudi regime to politicize it and target Yemeni workers or detainees of different nationalities and present them as prisoners of war.

"We also confirm that, during this year, we have provided several humanitarian initiatives on one side, in which we released more than 400 prisoners of war from the other side unilaterally, because we believe that it is a humanitarian issue par excellence," The committee added.

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 inculded 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.

#US_Saudi_Aggression #National Committee for Prisoners Affairs About 1 year