Houthis Detain Dozens of Yemenis for Tearing Down Posters of Khamenei, Soleimani, Nasrallah

The Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen have detained dozens of people in the Mahwit province for tearing down posters of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, slain Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.
Yemeni human rights sources said
the posters had been posted by the Houthis.
“The residents of the village were outraged by
the Iranian posters and Khomeini slogans that the Houthis have put up in all
areas under their control, including schools, mosques, landmarks and state
offices,” they added.
The residents, therefore, decided
to tear up the posters.
The move prompted a crackdown by
the Houthis.
The American Center for Justice
(ACJ), a Yemeni non-government organization, expressed its condemnation of
home-raids carried out by Houthi gunmen against the people of Al-Arah village
last week.
ACJ said this incident terrorized
children and women after the heavily armed gunmen broke into houses and the
village mosque and detained 42 citizens to a secret Houthi detention center.
“The abductees were subjected to inhuman
treatment as well as physical and psychological torture with the aim of forcing
them to confess that they were responsible for blurring some of the slogans of
the Houthi group on some of the walls of village’s houses and the wall of the
mosque beside tearing pictures of Houthi and Iranian leaders, including
Soleimani and Nasrallah,” the Center said.
It quoted a relative of one of the
abductees as saying: “It was a night of terror. We have never imagined we would
sleep in fear and insecurity in our own houses except in the era of the
Houthis. So suddenly, you wake up to the sound of the chaos caused by the
gunmen raiding the village and terrorizing the children and women without
conscience.”
ACJ stresses that the persistence
of widespread violations committed by the Houthi group undermines the chances
of peace and international efforts to stop the war.
The Center called on the Houthi
militias to put an end to the violations committed against civilians and to
immediately release all the abductees.