The United Arab Emirates (UAE) tortured Yemeni prisoners across 18 prisons in Yemen, The Associated Press (AP) revealed on June 21.
Hundreds of Yemeni prisoners were subject to sexual abuse in southern Yemen, where the UAE focuses its foreign policy in Yemen. Fifteen UAE officers ordered Yemeni prisoners to undress and lie down for anal cavity checks, claiming they were looking for contraband mobile phones. The Yemeni prisoners who resisted were beaten until they bled, and threatened with barking dogs.
Hundreds of other detainees suffered similar sexual abuse on 10 March at Beir Ahmed prison in southern Yemen, Aden, according to seven witnesses that spoke to the AP.
The UAE is a key United States ally whose secret prisons and widespread torture were exposed by an AP investigation last June.
The news agency has since identified at least five prisons where security forces use sexual torture to brutalise and break inmates.
They have swept up hundreds of men into a network of at least 18 hidden prisons on suspicion of being al-Qaeda or ISIL fighters. The prisoners are held without charges or trials.
Witnesses said Yemeni guards working under the direction of Emirati officers have used various methods of sexual torture and humiliation.
They raped detainees while other guards filmed the assaults. They electrocuted prisoners’ genitals or hung rocks from their testicles. They sexually violated others with wooden and steel poles.
The drawings show a man hanging naked from chains while he is being electrocuted, another inmate on the floor surrounded by snarling dogs as several people kick him, and graphic depictions of anal rape.
Source: Aljazeera
