Local Editor
The International Committee Of The Red Cross (ICRC) expressed its readiness to help the prisoner swap between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi Ansarullah movement in Yemen.
“We confirm our readiness to act as a neutral intermediary so many more can return to their families,” ICRC wrote on its Twitter page on Tuesday.
The comment was part of a tweet the organization posted as it announced the transport of a Saudi prisoner from Sana’a to Riyadh.
Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement on Tuesday released the prisoner on humanitarian grounds due to illness.
The prisoner, identified as Mousa Awaji, was repatriated by a Red Cross plane to the Saudi capital.
In response, the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen said that seven Houthi prisoners will be released, Saudi state television reported.
The United Nations special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, welcomed the Saudi prisoner release, tweeting that he hoped to see “more similar humanitarian gestures from the parties,” and looked forward to implementation of a prisoner exchange agreement.
Yemen’s warring parties have yet to agree full terms of a prisoner swap, one of the least contentious confidence-building measures agreed at U.N.-sponsored peace talks held in December amid Western pressure to end the conflict.
The United Nations is pushing for the exchange, and the implementation of a ceasefire in the main port city of Hodeida, to pave the way for a second round of discussions to end a war in which tens of thousands of people have been killed in almost four years.
Source: Yemenwatch.net
