‘Stripped naked’: Yemeni detainee recounts torture in UAE-run prison
Al Jazeera
A Yemeni man Ali Hassan Ali who spent more than two years in detention in secret prisons seeks justice.
It’s been more than six years since Ali Hassan Ali Bakhtiyan was released from a secret prison in eastern Yemen’s Hadramout Governorate, but he cannot forget the horrors he underwent during his more than two years in detention.
“It was a very bitter and extremely painful experience,” the 30-year-old man said, adding he was lodged inside the secret prison run by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and local Yemeni troops called the Hadrami Elite Forces (HEF) inside Hadramout’s Presidential Palace.
“They stripped me naked and used cold water. I was interrogated first by members of the Hadrami Elite Forces, then they handed me to the Emiratis officers,” Ali told Al Jazeera over the phone, saying he was detained twice – first in 2016 and then again in 2017.
The prison, Ali says, was not even suitable for animals. “Closed, dark rooms, hands tied and blindfolded. Twenty days went by without a chance to clean your body. They used physical and body torture, solitary confinement several times, beating many times,” Ali recalls.
The 30-year-old says he was first detained following a bomb blast in Hadramout. “I was falsely accused of being a member of the Islah Party,” he said, denying he was a member of the party, which is the main opposition party in Yemen. The country’s Muslim Brotherhood also falls under its umbrella.
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