Yemen prisoner swap to start tomorrow

AFP | Dubai                                         

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com    

Aprisoner exchange involving hundreds of detainees from Yemen’s civil war will start tomorrow, a Yemeni government official said, against a backdrop of rising hopes for peace.

Nearly 900 prisoners, most of whom were fighting with Huthis, will be flown between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the official said on Tuesday.

The prisoner exchange, the biggest since October 2020, will last three days and involve multiple cities in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, said Majid Fadael, the official spokesman for the government delegation negotiating the exchange.

The Huthis will release 181 prisoners, including Saudis and Sudanese, in exchange for 706 detainees held by government forces, according to an agreement reached last month in Switzerland.

“All arrangements have been completed... to implement the agreed-upon exchange process,” Fadael tweeted.

“The first day of the exchange process will be through reciprocal flights of the Red Cross between Aden-Sanaa and Sanaa-Aden,” he added.

The exchange agreement was struck days after the landmark announcement that Saudi Arabia and Iran would seek to restore diplomatic ties after a hiatus of seven years.

Yemen’s six-month, UN-brokered truce that officially lapsed in October is still largely holding, providing respite for a population of 30 million that is mostly dependent on aid.

‘Political solution’

This week, a Saudi delegation has held discussions with the Huthi leadership in Sanaa, hoping to “stabilise” the truce and seeking inter-Yemeni dialogue towards a “comprehensive political solution”, according to the Saudi ambassador.

After Thursday’s flights between rebel-held Sanaa and Aden, on Friday and Saturday prisoners will be flown in and out of Riyadh and Abha in Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Sanaa, Mocha and Marib, Fadael said.

“This exchange process will be followed by other exchanges in the near future until all detainees and abductees are released on the basis of all for all, and all detention centres and prisons are cleared,” he tweeted.

According to the Huthis, 13 prisoners arrived at Sanaa international airport on Saturday, in exchange for a Saudi prisoner who was released earlier.

“More than 1,050” prisoners were released in the last major exchange in October 2020, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Huthis’ political council, told AFP that the talks with the Saudi delegation “now revolve around lifting the (transport) blockade completely, withdrawing all foreign forces in Yemen, and releasing all prisoners”.