Aden (Al-Ittihad)
The Yemeni government announced the postponement of negotiations with the Houthi group regarding the exchange of prisoners, indefinitely.
This came in a tweet by Majid Fadail, spokesman for the Yemeni government team negotiating the prisoners, via the “X” platform.
Fadayel, who is also a member of the negotiating team and Undersecretary of the Ministry of Human Rights, said: “The holding of the round of negotiations for prisoners and abductees in Jordan has been postponed indefinitely, after the Houthis’ intransigence and obstruction of this meeting, which was scheduled for this week.”
He added that this came “after the group obstructed the scheduled round in Switzerland last November, in continuation of the practices committed by the group against the Yemeni people, and its exploitation of humanitarian issues politically and in the media.”
Last April, the Yemeni government and the Houthi group implemented a deal to exchange about 900 prisoners and detainees from both sides, mediated by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations, after bilateral negotiations in Switzerland.
During consultations in Sweden in 2018, the two parties presented lists of more than 15,000 prisoners, detainees, and abductees, but no accurate official count of the numbers is available after this date.
The Yemeni government says that it seeks to release all detainees according to the “all for all” rule, and accuses the Houthis of trying to abort discussions, through selectivity in names or demanding the names of detainees who are not held by government forces.
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