Testimony of Torture in Yemeni Prisons

At night, around Kushush, people would talk.

Everyone protected the others from electrocution. They had nothing but beatings.

Shock returns to Khudair Ali's face

whenever he recalls his first days in Abu

Musa Prison in the city of Al-Khawkhah.

There began an abduction ordeal that lasted more

than three years and involved various

forms of physical

and psychological torture at the hands of the aggressors.

Every day was nothing but beatings and punishment like none before or since.

Khudair Ali, from Al-Makha District on the

western coast, takes us back to the prison's

rooms and cells, recounting the methods

that he says the jailers used to torture him.

As soon as he begins recounting these details,

the first moments of that crime reappear on his face.

At two in the morning, they'd start screaming, then the beatings would begin at

four

in the morning. They'd put us in solitary. Solitary confinement was unbearable.

Then from eight in the morning until one, torture.

Cutting, hanging, brother, electrocution.

This was the harshest treatment we endured in any prison.

Khudair Ali's recollection of what happened was not

a passing matter as he documented his testimony. The impact of

the memories was evident in his words and features.

If merely recalling them years later

leaves all this pain, what effect did they have on him

as he lived through them day after day for more than

three years in the prisons of the instruments of aggression?

Of course, they held us in solitary confinement.

They brought us to Intelligence here, inside this room, behind three

doors.

Folks, three doors open.

Three doors, and they close from four in the morning until nine in the morning.

We woke up, joked around, then they beat us with a cable.

They left no blood in our bodies.

We could see the room, a wall here and a wall there.

We had no sleeping mats in the room. We had to use the toilet.

Not like dogs, sir.

He'd go get the cable. As soon as you said this word, he'd bring the cable.

He'd beat you with the cable and burn you with cigarette smoke at the door.

Inside it, solitary confinement and electric shocks.

The bathroom torture, you can't endure it.

I swear, we tasted so much from the dizziness.

They spray water, then your clothes cling to your body.

Then there were wounds on our bodies, wounds after the beatings.

After three breaths, your soul leaves your body.

Khudair Ali’s testimony adds a new chapter

to the accounts of prisoners and abductees from the western coast

about the violations inside the prisons

of the occupation on the western coast, and reveals

hope that liberation from the occupation’s tools is near, and what

atrocities they have committed against the Yemeni people.