News - Yemen: Ahmed Maher, a kidnapped journalist in the UAE's secret prisons in Aden, revealed the delay of the fifth court session set for him

“The fifth session scheduled for me has been canceled. I am still on hunger strike until death or standing before the judge in court.”

For his part, a legal source considered the repeated postponement an indication that the parties that kidnapped and hid Maher were unable to prepare a suitable charge and wished to prolong his imprisonment.

This postponement comes after canceling a session that was scheduled for last week. The prison administration refused to transfer Maher from prison to the courthouse, under the pretext that there was no petrol for the prison car. Although Maher's family expressed its willingness to bear the transportation costs, it did not receive a response from the concerned authorities.

Maher started an open-ended hunger strike to protest the delay in his trial.

On August 6, armed militia detained Maher and his older brother from Maher’s home in the Dar Saad neighborhood of Aden, which is under Saudi-Emirati occupation, without initially stating any reasons for the detention or where they were taking them.

The source said that the armed militia were affiliated with the Emirati-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC). A news report in independent local newspaper Al Masdar quoted an anonymous security source also blaming STC for the arrest. 

At the time, the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate called on the Saudi-backed government to take responsibility for this incident, release him, and provide a safe environment for journalists.

In early September, the STC militia published a video clip in which confessions were extracted from Maher under torture about his responsibility for a number of recent terrorist operations.

Amid Saudi-Emirati occupation and security chaos, Journalists in Aden have been targeted by arrests and threats over the past few years, and the city has seen several unsolved killings of journalists.