Local Editor
The Houthi Ansarullah revolutionaries on Friday announced that they are willing to start a process of swapping prisoners with the Saudi-backed resigned regime based in the country's southern part.
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, leader of the Houthi Supreme Revolutionary Committee, said in a statement that they also talked to neutral organizations, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and informed them of the readiness for prisoner swap.
Two days ago, the Hadi regime showed the same willingness to conduct a prisoner exchange deal with the Houthis in the holy month of Ramadan.
The resigned regime’s Minister of Information along with the Minister of Human Rights held a press conference at the Yemeni Embassy in Riyadh and called the ICRC to serve as an intermediary between the two-warring sides.
According to the ministers, Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi issued his directives to the regime in order to deal positively with the process of exchanging prisoners with Houthis.
There are no estimates available for the number of war prisoners and detainees held in the pro-regime prisons in the southern provinces or in the prisons of the Houthi authorities in Sana’a.
However, the Ministry of Human Rights based in Aden said last year that there were more than 14,000 detainees in the prisons controlled by Houthis in Sana’a and hundreds had been tortured to death.
On March 26, 2015, the U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia, leading a military coalition of 10 Arab countries, intervened in the Yemeni conflict to roll back the Houthis' gains and forcefully reinstate Hadi to Sana’a.
The ongoing war has killed more than 10,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, and displaced around three million others, according to UN aid agencies.
The conflict has also triggered humanitarian crisis and pushed the poor Arab country on the brink of mass famine.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
