Michigan – The American Center for Justice (ACJ) stated that the governorate of Aden and several southern governorates have, since 2015, witnessed a grave pattern of serious human rights violations. These violations include enforced disappearance, torture, and unlawful detention within a network of secret prisons that emerged and expanded outside the framework of the state and judiciary. This occurred in a context marked by the militarization of the security landscape, the paralysis of the justice system, and the absence of effective judicial oversight, thereby undermining the rule of law and stripping civilians of the most basic legal protections.
Over the years of the conflict, the American Center for Justice (ACJ) has documented widespread cases of abduction, enforced disappearance, and death under torture, targeting civilians, activists, journalists, and government employees. Victims were detained in undisclosed locations without judicial warrants, while their families were denied information regarding their fate or whereabouts. These practices have been attributed to security and military formations affiliated with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), supported by the United Arab Emirates. Such acts constitute grave violations of the right to liberty and personal security and represent one of the most dangerous continuing crimes, as they involve the denial of the victim’s legal existence and prolonged suffering for the families of the disappeared.
The Center notes that enforced disappearance has been closely linked to systematic practices of torture and ill-treatment within secret detention facilities. Survivors and documented testimonies report that detainees were subjected to severe physical and psychological torture, prolonged solitary confinement, denial of medical care, and coercion to extract confessions. As a result, dozens of forcibly disappeared individuals were killed, in flagrant violation of the absolute prohibition of torture, which may not be restricted or justified under any circumstances, including armed conflict or security emergencies.
The Center further explained that the establishment and operation of a network of secret prisons outside the legal framework constituted a systematic pattern of arbitrary detention, used as a tool to eliminate opponents and silence dissenting voices, entirely beyond judicial oversight or institutional accountability. This reality has entrenched a climate of fear, eroded public trust in state institutions, and transformed deprivation of liberty into a means of political domination and control.
The American Center for Justice affirms that these crimes are not subject to statutes of limitation, and that any subsequent political or security changes, including the dissolution of the Southern Transitional Council or the restructuring of its affiliated forces, do not absolve its leaders or members of individual criminal responsibility for crimes of enforced disappearance, torture, and unlawful detention. Accountability remains applicable under the principle of non-impunity, a cornerstone of international human rights law, and political transitions may not be used as a pretext to evade justice.
The American Center for Justice calls on the Yemeni government to open independent, impartial, and effective judicial investigations into all crimes of enforced disappearance, torture, and the management of secret detention facilities; to ensure the immediate disclosure of the fate and whereabouts of all forcibly disappeared persons; to close all unlawful places of detention; and to refer those responsible, including commanding and supervising officials, to the judiciary without exception.
The Center also demands the immediate release of all arbitrarily detained individuals, and the guarantee of their and their families’ rights to truth, justice, and reparations, including compensation, rehabilitation, and guarantees of non-repetition.
Furthermore, the Center urges the international community, particularly the United Nations and the Human Rights Council, to support effective accountability mechanisms and to take serious action to hold perpetrators of enforced disappearance and torture in southern Yemen accountable, as these constitute among the gravest violations threatening social peace and undermining any genuine path toward justice and sustainable peace.
To submit complaints, reports, and documented information:📧 info@acjus.org
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