Huda Al-Sarari — the woman who brought to notice UAE prison torture practices against civilians in Yemen, ended up paying a heavy price in exchange — the life of her son.
“These families were saying, ‘Help us, our sons were kidnapped. I couldn’t hear about these violations and crimes and do nothing.” The motivation behind Huda Al-Sarari’s report on UAE prison torture arose from her work representing women in domestic abuse cases and those subjected to gender-based violence. The violations in the civilian conflict only pushed Al-Sarari to expand her area of expertise and help the helpless, regardless of their gender.
As soon as the civilian conflict in Yemen evolved into a full blown proxy war between power-hungry regional countries, Al-Sarari’s role started becoming increasingly critical. Al-Sarari started receiving calls in the middle of the night from women, troubled by the sudden disappearance of the men of their house — fathers, brothers, husbands and sons.
Apparently, the events began taking place soon after the Saudi-led coalition, including the United Arab Emirates came into action through ground and aerial command in Yemen. There operations were backed by the US and other international superpowers to be held accountable.
Despite being a key ally to the United States in the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), the number of disappearances in an around the Aden city increased and reached hundreds, which was speculated to be commanded by the UAE. Reports of the disappeared men being detained, beaten up and often tortured in secret prisons run by UAE-backed, trained and armed Yemeni security forces started circulating, too.
This instigated Al-Sarari to quietly investigate the reports of UAE prison torture along with a group of fellow attorney and activists.
Their painstaking documentation concluded in a database that at some point listed the names of 10,000+ men and boys, a majority of whom were kept detained outside the state’s judicial system.
The finding about UAE prison torture by Al-Sarari and team helped expose an entire network of secretly run prisons by the Emiratis with the US forces having complete knowledge at certain times along with direct involvement on other times.
However, the end to it wasn’t what the Yemeni attorney and women’s rights activists had expected even in her wildest dreams. A woman who helped become the voice of so many mothers, ended up losing her own son in the battle for humanity.
In March 2019, Al-Sarari was being broadcasted on television a discussing about a range of protests that were being staged against the Yemeni special security forces responsible for the disappearance of the thousands of men and boys.
At the same same time, her 18-year-old son Mohsen, who was at one of the protests, demonstrating was shot. He did not die on the scene, but was immediately paralyzed and remained in intensive care for about a month, before succumbing to his injuries. Al-Sarari fled Yemen the same year, but months after the death of her teenage son, sensing that the biggest turning point of her life was a retaliation for reporting about UAE prison torture.
Now, she hides in a country that she denied naming in her interview with The Intercept, but continues to take field calls from back home, especially of mothers, to investigate reports of abuses.
