SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties revealed in a new report “Capital Punishment “as discretionary penalty” the violations impacted opponents of the Houthi militia and how some unlawful courts manipulated to issue judicial rulings against their opponents, including death sentences and confiscating of assets, in trials that lacked the most minimum legal standards for a fair trial.

SAM said that it has documented nearly 150 discretionary death sentences issued by the Houthis-run exceptional courts in the capital, Sana'a, against their opponents and adversaries, including some of the Baha'i community, who were forcibly deported through the mediation of the United Nations.

SAM conducted about fifty interviews, with relatives of (arbitrarily detained) victims, lawyers and human rights activists, and attend the sessions of some of the trials that were held in public, to see closely the proceedings of the trials.

SAM indicated that the trials that the Houthi militia hold against political opponents are in their entirety "show trials." The sentenced included senior state officials, including President Hadi and the Prime Minister, and (35) parliamentarians, academics, journalists, activists, soldiers, and citizens, and some ordinary people, including Asma Al-Omeisi, whom the Houthis accused of terrorism, deprived her of all legal rights, and sentenced her to death.

According to SAM report, all those convicted faced one charge of aiding aggression and high treason. Parliamentarians were among the first victims of discretionary death sentences, followed by politicians, including President Abd Rabbo Mansour, who was sentenced to three death sentences, and the military and journalists with (4) Journalists and other civilians.

SAM monitored and documented many violations of the right to a fair and impartial trial, including for Muhammad Hajar, who was sentenced to death by a court subject to the Houthi authorities after he was arrested and made to disappear in National Security prisons and tortured due to the coalition’s targeting of his farm that was used by the Houthis to launch missiles at Saudi Arabia and accuse him of association with people in Saudi Arabia.

SAM also received complaints of a number of lawyers defending the that they were subjected to harassment, threats, media mobilization, and incitement by the judges of the courts before which they defend their clients, members of the public prosecution, or the media of the Houthi militia.

SAM concluded in its report that many of the defendants denied the charges against them, and indicated that their confessions were extracted under torture, and that they were subjected to ill-treatment and torture in various detention centers, including in the Political Security, police departments and the Criminal Investigation Department in Sana'a.

SAM called on the Houthi militia to immediately stop the arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearance, and the use of torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment.

SAM also called on the international community to pressure the Houthi militia to stop the unfair trials against civil activists, politicians, journalists and minorities, and to abolish the sentences issued against opponents of the Houthi militia.

The Full Report HERE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Niyx5w8bFPk