Six people held by Houthi authorities in Yemen were moved into criminal proceedings on 23 August 2026, when their cases were transferred to the Specialized Criminal Prosecution in Sanaa. They include a United Nations employee, a UN consultant and three people who worked with international and local nongovernmental organizations.
The transfer marks a new stage in a detention campaign that began on 31 May 2024 and has swept up dozens of UN staff and employees of Yemeni and international civil society groups. Rights researchers who have tracked the arrests since June 2024 say most of those seized were never shown arrest warrants, and that many were forcibly disappeared for months, held without any acknowledgment of where they were.
A UNICEF consultant among the six
One of the six is Dr. Ali Al-Mudhwahi. When he was arrested he was working as a consultant for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and also advising the Houthi-run Ministry of Public Health and Population, according to his wife. He told her by phone that authorities had subjected him to “solitary confinement, torture, and severe psychological pressure” throughout his detention. The Houthis, who oppose vaccination, tried to force him to confess that vaccines were “nothing but espionage tools” and that he was “a spy recruited by the World Health Organization,” she said.
The Houthis have a long record of torturing detainees. Those held in this campaign have been denied adequate access to lawyers, to their families and to medical care, including detainees with serious medical conditions.
What Yemeni and international law require
Yemen’s Criminal Procedures Law obliges judicial officers to hear a detainee’s statement immediately and to refer the detainee, together with the arrest report, to the public prosecution within 24 hours. Prosecutors must then decide the case within a further 24 hours or release the detainee. International human rights law similarly requires that anyone detained be brought promptly before a judge or an equivalent authority to rule on the lawfulness of the detention, and be charged promptly or released.
Holding humanitarian workers for prolonged periods without prompt referral to prosecutors or meaningful judicial review breaches those safeguards, and the absence of basic due process undermines the legitimacy of anything that follows, including the interrogation now under way before the Specialized Criminal Prosecution. Rights organizations following the cases are calling on judicial institutions under Houthi control, the special prosecution included, to comply with Yemeni and international law and order the release of everyone held arbitrarily.
This report was produced by the HuMedia newsroom.
