A human rights organization calls on the Houthi militias to immediately release businessman Hashem Al-Hamdani and his family

On Monday, SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties called on the Houthi militia to immediately release businessman Hashem Al-Hamdani and his family members who were kidnapped eight months ago.

The Geneva-based organization said in a statement that the Houthi militia kidnapped businessman Hashem Al-Hamdani from Sanaa International Airport last November and forcibly hid him from his family from that time until today without any legal justification.

The statement added that the Houthi militia kidnapped Al-Hamdani and his family members on fabricated charges related to communicating with “aggression and association with elements of the former regime,” and pressured him to force him to give up his property in favor of the Houthi judicial guard.

The organization quoted his daughter-in-law as saying that the militia also stormed Al-Hamdani’s house and confiscated all his property papers, company, homes and real estate, including a property worth a thousand bricks in the Bani Matar district.

Last December, the militia kidnapped his son Amr and a number of other family relatives, approximately nine people according to the organization, to put pressure on the family and hid them in the Political Security prison in the Al-Anab neighborhood, without allowing their families to visit them except very limited times.

The organization indicated that the Houthi militia threatened the family not to inform the media or empower a lawyer to defend them, but the family finally decided to reveal these crimes after learning that Al-Hamdani suffers severely from high blood pressure and diabetes without providing him with appropriate care.

The organization revealed, citing Amr Al-Hamdani's family, that he does not know his firstborn daughter, whom he had while in prison, and the militia did not allow him to visit him for several months, nor did it enable him to contact his wife during and after her birth.

She confirmed that what the Houthi militia is doing comes within the framework of its policies by which it plunders businessmen and represents a grave violation of basic human rights, including the right to freedom, the right to enable the accused to appoint a lawyer, the right to obtain a fair trial, and the right to property and possession, which... Guaranteed by local and international laws.

SAM also expressed its full solidarity with the detainees, calling on the de facto Houthi authorities to immediately and unconditionally release them, led by Hashem Al-Hamdani, to stop bargaining with him in order to give up his property, and to return all looted items. SAM also calls on the Houthi group. It is necessary to subject those involved in the case to accountability and punishment.