Human Rights Watch has accused the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen of directly exploiting the judiciary to suppress opponents and dissent.
Houthi authorities have detained dozens of political opponents since July 2025, including the leaders of several political parties in Yemen, some of which may amount to enforced disappearances, HRW said on Thursday.
The detentions are part of a wider campaign over the last year and a half, targeting members of civil society, United Nations and nongovernmental organization staff, businesspeople, and even people within the Houthi authorities. At least 59 UN staff are in detention with no access to lawyers and limited, if any, access to their families, said HRW.
Concurrently, Houthis are escalating dubious accusations of espionage against people they have detained, including in a recent unfair trial against 21 individuals in which 17 were sentenced to death. Many of them were charged with espionage without adequate access to due process, it added.
“Rather than addressing the urgent needs of Yemenis in Houthi-controlled territories, the Houthis seem to be detaining anyone they deem a threat to their movement,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They should immediately release all those arbitrarily detained and shift their focus to protecting the rights and fulfilling the needs of those living in areas under their control.”
The Houthis have been detaining individuals affiliated with political opposition parties since their takeover of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, in 2014. However, they have escalated these arrests in the last few months.
A spokesperson for the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, known as the Islah party, Adnan al-Odaini, told HRW that the campaign against their party started after Houthi forces attempted to arrest, and ultimately killed, Sheikh Saleh Hantos, a prominent sheikh in Rayma governorate, on July 1.
The Houthis accused Hantos, a religious scholar in his 70s and a member of Islah, of “adopting stances aligned with the United States and Israel and undermining popular and official activities supporting the Palestinian resistance.”
On August 3, Houthi authorities detained Rami Abdulwahab, an official of the Arab Socialist Baath Party. On August 20, the Houthis detained Ghazi al-Ahwal, the secretary general of the General People’s Congress, the political party affiliated with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. On September 25, they detained Aaidh al-Sayadi, deputy secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party in Dhamar governorate.
Relatives of Abdulwahab and al-Sayadi said that the two men have not been allowed family visits or permitted to appoint lawyers to represent them, said HRW.
Human Rights Watch has previously documented cases of Houthis detaining and forcibly disappearing dozens of people due to their political affiliation, including in April 2020, when they detained 25 Islah party members from Dhamar.
In June 2024, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced 44 people detained in 2020 to death, 16 of them tried in absentia, with five others sentenced to prison terms, Musawah reported. None had adequate access to lawyers.
The relative of one of the individuals sentenced to death said that the family had tried to appoint Abdulmajeed Sabra, a prominent lawyer in Sanaa, to his case, but that the judge “refused to give Sabra a copy of the case file and didn’t allow him to speak and kept asking him to be silent, and when Sabra objected, the judge ordered him to leave the court.”
On September 25, 2025, the Houthis stormed Sabra's office in Sanaa and took him to an undisclosed location.
In their 2025 report, the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen stated that “the [Houthis’] Judiciary has been weaponized to suppress dissent and free expression.” They further stated that “the Specialized Criminal Prosecution Office in Sanaa has charged hundreds of individuals with treason and espionage.”
They said that “detainees are often not shown arrest warrants, not presented with formal charges, and denied legal counsel and access to evidence. Many are held for prolonged periods without trial or judicial oversight.”
HRW and other groups, including the former UN Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, have documented the Houthis’ use of torture to obtain information or confessions.
“The Houthis should immediately release all those arbitrarily detained solely for their political affiliations,” Jafarnia said. They should also free others arbitrarily detained, including those held for commemorating the September 26 revolution, journalists, lawyers, and dozens of United Nations and civil society staff.”
