SANAA — Medical teams assessed whether 159 men were fit for road travel before the Houthi authorities released them on Saturday, in an operation the Red Cross says it supported. Which forces the men belonged to and where they were captured, the Houthi side did not say, and the Red Cross says it played no part in choosing them.
The Houthis described the men as fighters who “voluntarily surrendered without fighting” during recent combat, Xinhua reported. Abdul Qader al-Murtada, head of the group’s prisoner affairs committee, announced the release at a press conference in Sanaa and said it fell under a general amnesty that Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council, issued on Sept. 10.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said the release was unilateral and carried out by authorities in Sanaa with its support, according to Anadolu Agency. Its delegates interviewed the detainees beforehand, informed their families and helped with their return home; medical teams assessed their health.
The ICRC added that the release was initiated by the Houthi-affiliated National Committee for Prisoners Affairs and falls outside the 2018 Stockholm Agreement, reached under UN auspices between Yemen’s internationally recognized government and the Houthis, Anadolu reported. It stressed that it had no role in determining who or how many people would go free.
A negotiated exchange has been waiting longer. In May, the two sides agreed in UN-sponsored talks in Jordan to swap about 1,750 detainees, the largest such deal since the conflict began, yet Xinhua reported on Sept. 13 that it had not been implemented. Neither Saturday report says whether that has changed.
The tallies come from the Houthi side. Al-Murtada called Saturday’s batch the second under the amnesty, after 323 prisoners freed in Hodeidah province on Sept. 15, with dozens more released separately in Taiz province, Xinhua reported. On Sept. 13, an anonymous Houthi military official told Xinhua the group had freed 210 of its own members from a government-run prison in Mocha; the government had not immediately commented.
The releases come amid renewed fighting between the Houthis and forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition. Neither Saturday report carries a government response, or says whether the names of the 159 have been published.
