Mohammed Qahtan: Yemeni Politician and His Family in Darkness
No one, not even Muhammad Qahtan’s family, expected that April 4th, 2015 would be the final day they would see his face and know with confidence that he was fine. On that day, a military force from the Ansar Allah group (Houthis) stormed the home of leading figure, Mohammed Qahtan, of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Islah), Muhammad Qahtan. They took him, body and soul, from his family and tossed him into the midst of complete disappearance. On April 4, 2023, Mr. Qahtan forced disappearance marked its eighth year. Eight years long and the Houthis refused to disclose his fate, with no visit, no contact. There is not any information that can be based on to make sure that his health is all right. It is a forced disappearance crime against a politician approaching his sixties, and against his family that doesn’t know whether their beloved man is in an appropriate place to sleep or suffering and lacking necessary care. In February 2015 the Houthi gunmen had stopped Mr.Mohammed Qahtan at a checkpoint in Ibb governorate when he was on his way to Taiz city and they returned him back to his house in Sana’a and put him under house-arrest until the day on which he was arrested in April. Then, they allowed his son to visit him one single time in the early days of his detention. At that time he was detained in a house belonging to one of the political leaders, the house was controlled by the Houthi group when they took over Sana’a. Afterwards, Qahtan was moved to detention and the Houthi group denied him any visit and held back from offering any clarifications about his fate. There are other detainees the Houthi group has committed the same crime against them and their own families. By doing so, the group has recalled the specter of severe political eras where forced disappearance in Yemen has got a long history of cruelty. There is still a large number of people who had been forcibly fully disappeared by the political regimes in the south and the north of Yemen since 1962, whose fates are still unknown until now. Mr Qahtan has five daughters and four sons. He has been a senior member of the High Commission of Al-Islah Party since 2007. His daughter, (23 years) told Mwatana in an interview about some details of her father’s arrest. She said a group of gunmen in the Republican Guards troops uniform boarding two Hilux pick-up cars came to their house in Al-Nahdhah neighborhood, in the capital Sana’a, at around 1:00 P.M. on April 4, 2015, they sought for her dad. She went on saying:” My father was asleep when the Houthis came, my brother and my husband prevented them from entering the house, then my father woke up and performed his Wadhoo (washed his face, hands, legs) to perform midday prayers. He told them that he would perform the prayers in their sight and go with them, but they didn’t allow him to do so and took him soon with them. she depicts the mood the family experienced in the wake of the detention saying:” We remained in darkness, we don’t know where is my father?” This glimpse has been presented by his daughter about the circumstances of her father’s forcibly disappearance is all she could say. This is what the forced disappearance crime always does it leaves the family of the disappeared person without any details or prospects. Qahatan’s wife, therefore, couldn’t answer our questions about him, but with many silent tears which have been continuing to flow down… The forced disappearance crime is extending one to touch upon the victim and his family, not only Mr. Qahtan’s family alone has experienced this ordeal. The Houthi group from September 2014 until now has carried out a series of arbitrary detention, most of which have undergone different levels of forced disappearance; a number of those detainees are still forcibly disappeared until now. Regardless of the forcibly disappeared people are in dark detentions or light may be leaked into their incarceration, and their families are living in darkness. The Houthi group should disclose the fate of Mr. Qahtan and all forced disappeared people and set them free. The group must remember that the forced disappearance crime is one of the crimes against humanity that is stipulated in the international conventions as International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the UN Declaration also stipulates the protection of all persons from a forced disappearance. It is not allowed to cite exceptional conditions whether related to a state of war or the threat of war may break out or the state of internal political insatiability or any other case to justify the forced disappearance. In the international agreement for the protection of all people from a forced disappearance. Forced disappearance is:” the arrest, detention or abduction of persons by, or with the authorization, support or acquiescence of, a State or a political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the fate or whereabouts of those persons, with the intention of removing them from the protection of the law for a prolonged period of time. The Rome basic system of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which was endorsed in Rome on May 17, 1998, the enforced disappearance implies crimes against humanity.
