A decision by the Houthi militias to execute Fatima Al-Arouli, a Yemeni human rights activist, was widely condemned by government and human rights figures, who called on the international community to intervene to stop the group’s violations.
On Tuesday, a court controlled by the Houthis in Sanaa decided to execute the human rights activist on charges of spying for the international coalition to support legitimacy, after trial procedures that local and international human rights bodies described as politicized and unfair.
The woman was kidnapped from a checkpoint in Taiz Governorate in mid-August 2022.
The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of kidnapping thousands of women from their homes and workplaces, and from streets and checkpoints, taking them to detention centers and secret prisons, fabricating malicious charges against them, and practicing all forms of blackmail, psychological and physical torture, and sexual harassment and assault against them, because of their political, media and human rights activism.
Minister of Information Muammar Al-Eryani noted that the group, since its coup against the state, aims to limit the freedom of women and their participation in public life.
The government called on the international community, the United Nations, its special envoy to Yemen, and human rights organizations to take real action to force the Houthis to release Al-Arouli and all the kidnapped and forcibly disappeared women in illegal detention centers.
According to a document issued by the court, which was seen by the AFP, the Houthi court convicted Al-Arouli, the head of the Yemeni branch of the Arab League’s Arab Women Leadership Council, of “communicating with the UAE”, gathering military intelligence and sending key Houthi locations to the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen to be bombed.
Yemeni human rights organizations and social figures considered the death sentence against the activist to be a violation of the standards and values of justice.
A statement signed by dozens of intellectuals, activists, and social figures stated that Al-Arouli was deprived of the right to defend herself, and her lawyer was expelled in the first session of the trial, after she was detained for a year in an underground cell.
A local organization reported that since the Houthi group took control of Sanaa, that same court has issued more than 500 sentences against political opponents.
