clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

UK, US, Turkey called on to investigate UAE war crimes in Yemen

February 12, 2020 at 4:05 pm

UAE backed forces in Yemen, 16 June 2016 [Facebook]

The US, Britain and Turkey have officially been asked to arrest senior officials from the UAE who are suspected of carrying out war crimes and torture in Yemen, according to the UK-based news agency Reuters.

British Law firm Stoke White filed complaints to a number of governmental bodies of the three countries, including the London Metropolitan Police and the US and UK ministries of justice, on behalf of a journalist named Abdullah Suliman Abdullah Daubalah and Salah Muslem Salem, whose brother was killed in the Yemeni conflict.

The complaints, which were filed today, state that numerous cases of torture and war crimes inflicted on civilians in Yemen during 2015 and 2019 were committed by UAE forces and their foreign mercenaries.

According to one of the three sources cited by Reuters: “It is requested that the UK, US and Turkish police open investigations into these alleged crimes as soon as possible.”

READ: Is the UAE the Gulf’s ‘Little Sparta’ or a mercenary outpost?

The figures who were identified in the complaints included military and political leaders from the UAE who live both in the Emirates and the US, but who also travel regularly to the UK.

In the ongoing Yemeni civil war, which began in 2015 and in which the internationally-recognised government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi is being backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE while the Shia Houthi militias are being backed by Iran, mercenaries have been deployed and used by the UAE.

The mercenaries that the Emirates has hired are predominantly from South America, mainly Colombia, and have reportedly used methods of torture throughout their campaign in the country.

In January last year, it was revealed that US interrogators were working at UAE prisons in Yemen.

READ: The UAE’s torture in the shadows