A Yemeni militia backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been accused of kidnapping several young “northerners” in the southern port city of Aden, with relatives alleging they have been wrongly detained, tortured and denied access to a fair trial.
In a series of videos and documents sent to Al Jazeera, the relatives said they had not heard from or seen their loved ones after they were picked up by the UAE-created Security Belt – a force set up in 2016 to police southern areas in the war-ravaged country.
The sister of Ahmed Abdullah Salam al-Meshwali, who was 19 when he went missing, said all she knew was that her brother was being held at Bir Ahmed, a military camp controlled by the Security Belt in Aden.
Lynn Maalouf, director of research at Amnesty International in the Middle East, told Al Jazeera that there had been an “uptick in arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances across the country.
Last year, The Associated Press news agency reported that torture, heavy beatings and sexual assault were rife in the informal prisons set up by the UAE and its allied forces.
