Yemen : Appeal for a stay of execution of two Yemeni Citizens detained in Iraq

The Alkarama Foundation (Geneva) and the National organisation for defending rights and freedom - Hood (Sana) urge the Iraqi authorities not to apply the death penalty for two Yemeni citizens among a group of nineteen who have been detained for many years, and who faced unfair trials and sentences, including a Yemeni woman who has been sentenced for life imprisonment.

Alkarama and Hood are surprised by the deafening silence of the Yemeni authorities towards their detained citizens in Iraq, despite the imminent danger of the execution of two of their citizens, and urge them to move quickly to save their lives.

The complaints officer and lawyer in the Hood organisation for human rights, Mr Abdel Rahman Barman, revealed the names of the two detainees who are sentenced to death in Iraq. They are Mr Nabil Ahmad Saleh Awdeh (32 years) from Sanaa, and Mr Saleh Musa Ahmad Baydani (18 years) from Aden in the south. They are both currently in one of Baghdad's prisons.

Mr Barman considers that “their sentences resulted from unfair trials, conducted when the country was under foreign occupation”. He indicates that “there are real fears among the families of both Mr Awdeh and Mr Baydani, that the Iraqi authorities may take steps to carry out the sentences, and these fears are shared by human rights organisations”.

He added: “we obtained information about 19 Yemeni prisoners. Some are detained in the Susa jail in the Sulaymaniah province of Kurdistan and the others are in the Rasafa prison in Baghdad. They have been given varying sentences ranging from death to jail periods ranging from 15 to 30 years”. He affirmed that “these sentences resulted from trials that do not meet the minimum requirements of justice, and the minimum legal guarantees for the accused in terms of defence.”

Mr Barman said that the Yemeni government did send a National Security Service team to Iraq in 2006, which visited the prisoners, and promised the detainees that they will be released following their interrogation and the clarification of some details. Despite this, they are still detained.

Mr Rashid Mesli, Director of the Legal Department at Alkarama in Geneva said that “the organisation has received many calls for help from the families of prisoners from various Arab countries, who have been held for years in Iraqi prisons, and most of them have been subjected to torture or maltreatment, including the Yemeni prisoners”. He indicated that “In the past few years, the Iraqi authorities have issued death penalties for scores of detainees against whom terrorist charges have been filed”

The detained Yemeni nationals in Iraq include Mrs Hasna Ali Hussein Yahya (29 years). She was accused of covering up for her Egyptian husband “Abu Ayyub”, the assumed leader of “Al Qaeda in Iraq”, who was assassinated by the occupying American forces on 16 April 2010. An Iraqi court has issued a life sentence against his Yemeni wife, Hasna, on 23 June 2011, after only one court session that lasted less than ten minutes during which she was not allowed to defend herself or to appeal. She was later given an additional sentence of ten years for the charge of obtaining a forged passport. These are unfair sentences that followed unfair trials and an arbitrary detention and ill treatment that lasted one and half years.

The Iraqi Presidency previously announced its ratification of the death sentences against 53 people including five nationals of other Arab countries, on 20 October 2012. The death sentence was carried out against eight of the detainees on 29 October. The Iraqi authorities said that they were convicted under article 4 of the anti-terror law and article 406 of the penal law.

Hood and Alkarama welcome the news about the suspending of execution sentences previously issued against detainees from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Libya, but at the same time, express their concern that the authorities will carry out the death sentences, as a form of revenge, despite the public commitment of the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani against the death sentence in principle, which was ratified by his two deputies.

The Iraqi High court committee has recently indicated that the courts continued to issue death sentences against those that are convicted of “terrorist crimes”. It confirmed that 516 death sentences were issued between 2009 and 2011, while the Iraqi ministry of Justice has declared on Thursday 27 October that 258 death sentences were carried out in Iraq since the fall of the previous regime in 2003. In light of the recent application and carrying out of death sentences against certain individuals, Alkarama and Hood have appealed to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Special Rapporteur on extra judicial, summary or arbitrary executions regarding the death penalty, that they intervene urgently with the Iraqi authorities to suspend death sentences against the detainees, and to re-examine the cases of those arrested on terrorism charges, or to repatriate them to their countries to carry out their sentences, if they had really committed the crimes that deserve such sentences.

A list of Yemeni detainees in Iraq.