News - Yemen: The National Committee for Prisoners Affairs confirmed that the US-Saudi mercenaries are still procrastinating the delivery of the lists of prisoners.

The head of the committee Abdulqader Al-Murtada wrote in a tweet that the committee did not reach 20% of the lists, despite the passage of more than two months since the agreement was reached on the exchange process, indicating that the mercenaries reject all solutions and proposals presented by the committee regarding the exchange of prisoners.

He demanded the United Nations to take firm measures against the procrastination of the mercenaries if it is serious about implementing the agreement.

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 included 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.