Review of the fifth periodic report of Yemen

1.6.2Enforced Disappearances

Some organizations report a worrying number of 300 disappearances over the last 30 years, some of which have been submitted to the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) by Alkarama.⁶⁹ In recent years, however, families of the disappeared have sometimes been able to obtain acknowledgements from the authorities that individuals were being detained. Disappearances were therefore resolved and retrospectively viewed as cases of prolonged incommunicado or secret detention.

Despite this, since the beginning of the uprising, local civil society organizations, including HOOD, the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms in Yemen, have documented 21 cases of disappearances. However, this appears to represents only a small number of the total number of suspected disappearances, due to few families reporting disappearances to NGOs – and in fact, HOOD continues to receive months-old cases of disappearances.

This practise is not limited to recent events: over the past two years, security forces in Yemen have carried out enforced disappearances, both of a targeted nature and apparently at random. Alkarama has reported cases of security officers who have arrested wanted individuals on the street and from their homes, but also at checkpoints based on suspicions regarding their names or provenance. Security agencies, including Political Security, have failed to acknowledge some detainees’ whereabouts, effectively disappearing them.

In a recent case, Mohamed Hammam Al-Dobii, aged 18 who lived in the neighborhood of "Nouqm" in Sana’a, was abducted on 23 March 2010 from his shop in Sana’a by masked officers in plain clothe from an unidentified intelligence force who drove three unmarked vehicles.⁷⁰ Following the arrest and the enforced disappearance of their son, Mr Al-Dobii's parents tried to find their son or at least learn of his whereabouts, but to no avail. On 31 March 2010, Alkarama submitted Mr Al-Dobii's case to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances requesting their intervention with the authorities for his release. Mr Al-Dobii's case is far from being an isolated incident.

Alkarama recalls that in November 2009 the Committee against Torture reviewed Yemen’s second periodic report. In its concluding observations, the Committee stated that the State party should take effective measures to ensure that all detainees are afforded, in practice, all fundamental legal safeguards from the very outset of their detention, and in particular “the right to have prompt access to lawyer and an independent medical examination, to notify a relative, and to be informed of their rights at the time of detention, including about the charges laid against them, as well as to appear before a judge within a time limit in accordance with international standards”.⁷¹ It also recommended that the State party “should also ensure that all detainees, including minors, are included in a central register that functions effectively."⁷²