4 April 2018
Neither Mohamed Qahtan Family nor anyone else might imagine that the fourth of April 2015 would be the last day in which they do see his face and realize for
certainty that he is alright. At that daylight of that day armed forces of Houthi group stormed the house of the leading figure, Mohammed Qahtan, of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform ( Al-Islah), they took him—soul and body—in front of his family members and propelled him into a full disappearance.
On April 4,2018, Mr Qahtan forced disappearance marked its third year. One year long and the Houthi authority refused to disclose his fate, no visit, no contact. There is not any information can be based on to make sure that his health is alright. It is a forced disappearance crime against a politician approaching his sixties, and against his family that doesn’t know whether their beloved man is in appropriate place to sleep or suffering and lacking necessary care.
In February 2015 the Houthi’s gunmen had stopped Mr Mohammed Qahtan in checkpoint in Ibb governorate when he was on his way to the city of Taiz and they returned him back to his house in Sana’a and put him under house-arrest until the day on which he was arrested in April. Then, they allowed his son to visit him for one single time in the early days of his detention. At that time he was detained in a house belongs to one of the political leaders, the house was controlled by the Houthi group when they took over Sana’a. Afterwards Qahtan was moved to a detention and the Houthi group denied him any visit and held back from offering any clarifications about his fate. There are other detainees the Houthi group has committed the same crime against them and their own families. By doing so, the group has recalling the specter of sever political eras where forced disappearance in Yemen has got a long history of cruelty. There is still large number of people who had been forcibly ully disappeared by the political regimes in the south and the north of Yemen since 1962, whose fates are still unknown until now.
Mr Qahtan has five daughters and four sons. He has been a senior member of the High Commission of Al-Islah Party since 2007. His daughter, (23 years) told Mwatana in an interview about some details of her father arrest. She said a group of gunmen in the Republican Guards troops uniform boarding two Hillux pick up cars came to their house in the quarter of Al-Nahdhah, in the capital Sana’a, at :1:oclock at noontime on April 4,2015, they sought for her dad.
She went on saying:” My father was sleep when the Houthis came, my brother and my husband prevented them from entering the house, then my father woke up and performed his Wadhoo (washed his face, hands, legs) to perform middy prayers. He told them that he would perform the prayers in their sight and go with them, but they didn’t allow him to do so and took him soon with them.
she depicts the mood the family experienced in the wake of the detention saying:” We remained in darkness, we don’t know where is my father?”
This glimpse has been presented from his daughter about the circumstances of her father forcibly disappearance is all what she could say. This is what the forced disappearance crime always does it leaves the family of the disappeared person without any details or prospect. Qahatan’s wife, therefore, couldn’t answer our questions about him, but with much silent tears which have been continuing to flow down. .
The forced disappearance crime is extending one to touch upon the victim and his family, not only Mr Qahtan’s family alone has experienced this ordeal. The Houthi group since September 2014 until now has carried out a series of arbitrary arrests, most of which have underwent different levels of forced disappearance; a number of those detainees are still forcibly disappeared until now.
Regardless the forced disappeared people are in dark detentions or light may leaked into their incarceration, their families are living in darkness.
The Houthi group should disclose the fate of Mr Qahtan and all forced disappeared people and set them free. The group must remember that the forced disappearance crime is one of the crimes against the humanity that is stipulated in the international conventions as International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the UN Declaration also stipulates the protection of all persons from the forced disappearance.
It is not allowed to cite exceptional conditions whether related to a state of war or the threat of war my break out or the state of internal political insatiability or any other case to justify the forced disappearance.
In the international agreement for the protection of all people from the forced disappearance. Forced disappearance is :” the arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time.
The Rome basic system of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which was endorsed in Rome on May 17, 1998, the enforced disappearance implies crimes against humanity.
