Amnesty International called The Southern Transitional Council (STC) de facto authorities in Aden to immediately and unconditionally release human rights lawyer Sami Yassin Ka’id Marsh, who has been "arbitrarily detained" without charge for four months merely for his work seeking accountability and justice for human rights violations in Yemen.
In a statement released Wednesday, Amnesty International said the security forces of the STC physically assaulted and arbitrarily detained Sami Yassin on 16 November 2023 as he was leaving work at the Supreme Judicial Council and Judicial Inspection in Khormaksar, Aden governorate.
The statement added “Following his arrest, security forces held him for almost four months at al-Nasr military camp, an unofficial detention center under the command of the Security Belt forces. According to leaked letters from Sami Yassin, while detained there he was tortured and held in solitary confinement. On 6 March, he was transferred to Bir Ahmad prison in Aden, where he remains to date amid serious concerns for his health after a photo leaked in early March showed him lying in a hospital bed.
Grazia Careccia, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa said ““It is shameful that Sami Yassin is being punished for doing his job defending people whose human rights were violated. His arbitrary detention, torture and prolonged solitary confinement illustrate the chilling lengths to which STC de facto authorities are willing to go to silence human rights defenders,”
Sami Yassin’s brother who is also one of his lawyers, told Amnesty International that before his detention, Sami Yassin received several threats from STC-affiliated security and judicial authority figures because of his work, including for following up on the case of a detainee who died in custody in June 2023 and the ongoing case of arbitrarily detained journalist Ahmad Maher.