UN expert: UAE officers involved in 37 sexual assault cases in secret prisons

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A picture taken on September 2, 2014 in the Iranian capital Tehran shows a wax statue of a detainee displayed in a cell of the "Qasr prison", a former prison hosting political prisoners that was turned into a museum in 2012. The building was built in 1790 at the time of Qajar king, Fath-ali Shah by the Russian architect Markov before it was converted into a prison in 1929. AFP PHOTO/ATTA KENARE

Al- Thawra Net

Head of UN Human Rights Expert Team in Yemen has revealed the involvement of UAE forces in sexual assaults on detainees and forcibly hidden persons in secret prisons in Yemen’s southern provinces.

In a television interview with Al-Jazeera on Saturday, head of the team Kamal Jendoubi confirmed that the team of human rights experts documented 37 cases of sexual violence committed by Emirati officers and members of their militias in Aden and Hadramout provinces.

“The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council’s militias are holding a number of women and girls and use them as hostages of war,” Jendoubi said.

He affirmed that the UN team had documented 600 interviews with Yemeni witnesses who experienced crimes of sexual assault and violations committed by the UAE forces in the southern provinces.

The UN team has a list of personalities who committed those crimes, he added.