The Yemeni Houthi group said today that it is ready to implement a prisoner exchange deal with the newly agreed Yemeni government in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and the government has accused the Houthis of not being serious and obstructing the implementation of agreements and efforts to exchange prisoners.
The head of the Houthi Prisoners and Detainees Affairs Committee, Abdul Qadir Al-Mortada, said in a tweet to him today on Twitter, that seeking to exchange prisoners "comes in the interest of their safety from the seriousness of the Corona virus."
Al-Murtada blamed the delay in completing the prisoner exchange agreement on the Saudi-Emirati coalition's refusal to sign the implementation plan for the United Nations and the Red Cross signed by his group two weeks ago.
With the help and success of God, during this week (14) prisoners of the army and the people's committees were liberated from several fronts in exchanges through local mediators.
We ask God to release the rest of the prisoners.
- Abdulqadir Al-Mortada (@abdulqadermortd) May 13, 2020
The government accuses,
however, that Majed Fadail, the undersecretary of the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights, a member of the Prisoners and Prisoners' Negotiating Committee, had announced weeks ago that the Houthi group "met the efforts with no seriousness, obstinacy, flimsy arguments and evaded the implementation of the exchange."
The Yemeni government signed an agreement with the Houthis last February in Jordan to exchange 1,400 prisoners under the supervision of the United Nations.
The United Nations proposed the implementation of the prisoner exchange agreement in two phases after the implementation of the Amman agreement was stalled, so that in the first stage, 1030 prisoners from both parties will be exchanged, and in the second stage, the estimated remaining 390 will be exchanged from both parties.
On March 20, the UN envoy Martin Griffiths called on the parties to the conflict in Yemen to accelerate the release of prisoners because of the risks of the Coronavirus.
The numbers of prisoners
The number of detainees and prisoners is not known to all the Yemeni parties, but on December 13, 2018 - after consultations in Sweden - the government and the Houthis reached an agreement regarding the solution of the situation in the coastal province of Hodeidah (West), in addition to the exchange of prisoners and detainees with The two sides, who number more than 15 thousand.
The government handed over lists of 8,567 names to the UN envoy, while the Houthis submitted lists of 7,000 prisoners, but the implementation of the agreement faces obstacles due to discrepancies between the signatories regarding the interpretation of a number of its provisions.