Name: Abdulhamid Jaafar
Arrestee: Houthi group
Date of arrest: August 2015
"No one should approach him; he will detonate himself," the Houthi supervisor warned his armed men, cautioning them against stopping the bleeding of the wounded man who was only dressed in his own clothes.
The supervisor had attacked Abdulhamid Jafar with a blow to the head, followed by a gunshot from his pistol that struck Abdulhamid, causing him to fall to the ground. His wife thought they had killed him and screamed out in a voice filled with anguish, "They killed Abdulhamid... They killed Abdulhamid."
Their young child, not yet five years old, cried uncontrollably as blood and tears streamed down. Meanwhile, the Houthi leader turned towards the wife and shot at her, hurling insults and aggressively snatching the touchscreen phone from her hand in front of the men who had meticulously planned Abdulhamid's arrest.
Abdulhamid was next to his house when a stranger approached him, stating that he wanted to rent his chicken farm. Abdulhamid extended his hospitality, offered him qat, and they initially agreed on the rental of the farm. At that moment, the man mentioned that he would contact his partners to come immediately and see the farm.
Indeed, two more individuals arrived, making the total number of partners three. Abdulhamid got up to walk with them towards the chicken farm when he was taken aback by the presence of ten armed men behind the house. Their leader pointed his pistol at Abdulhamid's head, while another gunman aimed his rifle at his abdomen. "What do you want?" he asked them.
"You are wanted at Al-Saleh Detention Center," the supervisor replied.
Abdulhamid complied willingly and accompanied them. The supervisor asked him for his small phone, and he handed it over without resistance. The supervisor searched it but found nothing of interest. Then he requested the touchscreen phone, but Abdulhamid refused to hand it over, saying, "It contains all the pictures of my eldest daughter on her wedding day."
The supervisor insisted on taking the phone, and Abdulhamid threw it towards his wife, who received a blow to the head with the handle of the supervisor's pistol. Immediately after, a gunshot was fired, hitting Abdulhamid in the left thigh, causing him to fall to the ground. The supervisor turned towards Abdulhamid's wife, verbally abused her, fired shots in her direction, and forcefully confiscated the phone from her.
Abdulhamid remembers the scene vividly, and he closes his eyes, succumbing to intense crying.
They carried him, injured, to the Al-Saleh City Detention Center. No one helped him control the bleeding caused by the supervisor's bullet. He removed his shirt and tore it to make a makeshift bandage for the wound. Afterwards, they took him to a nearby rural hospital, where he received initial medical treatment. Abdulhamid felt the pain of his injuries and the anguish of his ordeal, wondering, "What crime have I committed to be treated with such cruelty?"
They returned him to a cell in the residential area of Al-Saleh without any medication or sedatives. He was placed in an extremely cramped room with no bathroom or ventilation. The place was infested with insects and filled with filth and rotting food remnants. Abdulhamid's phones were with the supervisor, and whenever someone called him, the armed men would immediately go and arrest the caller, regardless of who it was. At that time, both the Houthis and Saleh forces had sent more than 11 military vehicles to the street in front of Abdulhamid Jafar's house. They arrested anyone passing through, and the number of detainees reached 60 people. The Houthis would say, "These are Jafar's gang members."
On that same night, they also forced Abdulhamid's wife and children to flee their home. Then, they stormed the house and looted all the gold, money, property documents, and other belongings within it.
Abdulhamid pauses in his speech, crying intensely. He doesn't want to remember what happened in the detention center—the denial of access to the bathroom, the agony of crawling on his wounded leg, and the iron shackles on his knee. Whenever he needed to relieve himself, he had to do so inside empty containers. They either hit his elbows or tugged at his ears if he tried to move away even slightly from his designated spot. He was deprived of his basic human rights.
"Every day, I experienced various forms of psychological and emotional torture," he says.
On one fateful day, they informed Abdulhamid that a shell had hit the Revolution Hospital in Taiz, where his beloved eldest daughter, the cherished bride whose wedding pictures he had kept on his touchscreen phone, was working. They told him that the shell had killed his daughter. He collapsed in grief, remembering the moment as if it had already happened. He sobs uncontrollably, and his heart will not find solace regarding his daughter until two years later when the Houthis allowed him to make two brief phone calls per year, each lasting no more than two minutes.
Abdulhamid fell into a half-hour fit of crying, and when he regained his breath, he moved on to the period beyond the sixth month of his detention. They opened the door to the unventilated room where they were holding him, submerged in filth and insects. In the apartment where he was detained, he found more than 25 other detainees whom they labeled as "senior ISIS members." Some of the detainees were subjected to severe torture involving electric shocks, the grill method, and various other methods. Abdulhamid experienced torture on a monthly basis, but his suffering was compounded by the pain in his leg from the supervisor's bullet, in addition to the torture equal to that endured by some of the other detainees.
"After five years of detention, the Houthis released Abdulhamid Jafar on December 19, 2019, as part of a prisoner exchange deal between the National Army forces and the Houthi group."
Testimonies from a journalist and two young men shed light on the largest detention centers used by the Houthis in Yemen.