Erada Organization: Flawed Exchange Agreements Entrench Impunity and Legitimize Violations

Erada Organization for Combating Torture and Enforced Disappearance has followed the incoming news regarding reaching an agreement to release about 1,750 detainees from various parties, most of whom are Houthi snipers and killers.

Erada Organization for Combating Torture and Enforced Disappearance, while anticipating and welcoming any step that alleviates the suffering of thousands of aggrieved families, welcomes any breakthrough that leads to the release of the abductees and detainees and their return to their families, and considers that the exit of any abductee from the darkness of the cells is a victory for human values.

However, Erada Organization for Combating Torture and Enforced Disappearance emphasizes that the lesson always remains in the full and transparent implementation, away from selectivity or politicization.

Erada Organization for Combating Torture and Enforced Disappearance also expresses its deep disappointment and regret over the continuation of the policy of ambiguity and non-disclosure of the fate of hundreds of forcibly disappeared persons whose fate remains unknown until this moment, and the remaining of thousands of abductees in the notorious Houthi detention centers.

Bypassing the file of the forcibly disappeared in negotiation rounds, or making it a subject for political bargaining, is a stab in the side of justice and international conventions. We hold the legitimate government, the United Nations, and its envoy to Yemen morally and legally responsible for the safety and freedom of everyone who has been disappeared behind bars without a trace.

Erada Organization also condemns in the strongest terms what has become of the fate of the politician and abductee, Mr. Muhammad Qahtan, and considers that talking about forming committees to verify his fate after long years of deliberate disappearance is an implicit acknowledgment of the disaster.

Erada Organization for Combating Torture and Enforced Disappearance condemns the crime of killing Muhammad Qahtan under torture, and strongly denounces what is being circulated about the placement of his body or its subjection to bombing and attributing that to the coalition aviation.

The history of the Houthis is full of gross violations of human rights; they have previously blown up detainees in the Akwan detention center in Sa’dah and attributed it to aerial bombardment, and we have definitive evidence against the Houthis in similar cases.

Erada Organization for Combating Torture and Enforced Disappearance considers what happened to be a double war crime that lacks the lowest human and religious values, and reveals excessive brutality in dealing with the victims even after their death, and a cheap trade carried out by the Houthis.

Erada Organization for Combating Torture and Enforced Disappearance emphasizes its firm stance on the necessity of releasing all abductees and detainees without exception, according to the “all-for-all” principle. It stresses that any agreement that does not include emptying the prisons and closing secret detention centers remains flawed and does not meet the aspirations of the Yemeni people to end this thorny humanitarian file.

Erada Organization demands the international community and the office of the UN Envoy to Yemen to exert real pressure to uncover the graves of victims who died under torture, reveal the forcibly disappeared, ensure the accountability of the perpetrators, and not allow them to escape punishment under the cover of political deals.

Issued by Erada Organization for Combating Torture and Enforced DisappearanceMay 15, 2026