Houthis start a new wave of arbitrary arrests

The Iran-backed Houthi militia has detained dozens of Yemenis linked to the U.S. Embassy or international organizations recently.

A Yemeni former employee of the U.S. Embassy in his country, Mr. al-Hamdani had been arrested in 2021 by Houthi militants who had taken control of the capital, Sana. 

In the years that followed, little was known about his case or those of 10 other active or former Yemeni employees of the U.S. Embassy detained with him, except that they were being held for links to the United States.

Houthis made a new series of arrests. They rounded up at least 27 staff members of United Nations agencies or local and international humanitarian organizations. In the following weeks, dozens more Yemenis working for similar groups were detained.

That wave of arrests in June raised fears of a broader crackdown on those linked to international organizations and foreign missions in Yemen. Tensions between the Houthis and the West have heightened over the past year, as the Yemeni militants have attacked international shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Nadwa al-Dawsari, a conflict analyst, said Houthi repression and detentions of U.N. and international staff had been going on for at least five years. But she suggested the newest round of arrests had a more focused goal: stifling local support for Western powers and institutions.

Yemen is home to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. More than half of the population — about 18.2. million people — require some form of humanitarian assistance, according to the U.N. This makes the work of local and international humanitarian aid organizations all the more critical.

After the Houthis overran Sana in 2014, the internationally recognized government there was forced to flee to the southern city of Aden. A Saudi-led coalition then launched a yearslong military intervention to oust them, but failed. That left the Houthis in power in northern Yemen, ruling over most of the country’s population.

The group now controls an impoverished proto-state stretching across northern Yemen and rules it with an iron fist. Previous detentions have underscored a pattern of arbitrary arrests, according to reports by groups such as Human Rights Watch.