YEMEN: FOUR SENTENCED TO DEATH OVER KIDNAPPING OF MSF AID WORKERS

05 October 2023 :

A court in Yemen’s southeastern province of Hadramout on October 3, 2023 sentenced four Yemenis to death for kidnapping international humanitarian workers last year. 
The Specialized Criminal Court of First Instance for Terrorism and State Security in the port city of Al-Mukalla, Hadramout’s capital, charged Mohammed Ali Al-Harethi, Ali Ghaled Al-Salehi, Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Salehi and Shehab Abdullah Al-Salehi with kidnapping two employees of the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, and ordering their execution by firing squad or beheading.
Five others were absolved in the same case.
In March 2022, armed men believed to be Al-Qaeda militants intercepted a vehicle transporting a German and a Mexican in the Hadramout province between Al-Aber and Al-Khasha. 
Six months later, the captors were apprehended, and Yemeni security forces raided their hideout and freed the two hostages.
During the past three years, the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, and other armed groups have killed and kidnapped a number of international charity workers across the country. 
In August, MSF said that two of its foreign employees had been kidnapped in the central province of Marib, not far from where their colleagues had been kidnapped in 2022. 
The organization’s Yemen office refused to share with Arab News any information on the situation of the two workers or the identity of the abductors, saying it is “still working on the safe return of colleagues.”

 

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