Alwaght- The US House of Representatives has voted to investigate the US role in torture prisons in south of Yemen, calling on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to find out.
Earlier this week, the House Rules Committee advanced an amendment by California Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee that would require the Department of Defense to investigate whether US allies in Yemen were involved in torturing detainees and if US personnel had any role in the interrogations. The measure was adopted unanimously on the floor by a voice vote on Thursday.
The vote came in the wake of a bruising confirmation fight that highlighted new CIA Director Gina Haspel’s role in the U.S. torture program in the years after 9/11.
An investigation by the Associated Press last year revealed a network of 18 clandestine prisons across south Yemen that are run by the United Arab Emirates – the U.S.’s primary ally in fighting Al Qaeda in Yemen – or by Yemeni forces controlled by the UAE. The investigation found that nearly 2,000 Yemenis had been disappeared into prisons where severe torture techniques were the norm, including a “grill” in which “the victim is tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire.”
The UAE was the first country to join the Saudi military aggression against Yemen in March 2015 that has killed and injured over 600,000 civilians, according to the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights.
A U.N. panel of experts in January largely affirmed the findings and found that UAE forces in Yemen were responsible for acts of torture that included beatings, electrocution, denial of medical treatment, and sexual violence.
The exact role that US personnel from the Defense Department or CIA play in these interrogations is not clear, but anonymous US defense officials told AP “that American forces do participate in interrogations of detainees at locations in Yemen, provide questions for others to ask, and receive transcripts of interrogations from Emirati allies. They said US senior military leaders were aware of allegations of torture at the prisons in Yemen, looked into them, but were satisfied that there had not been any abuse when US forces were present.”
For more than three years, the US has been supporting Saudi-led coalition's aggression on Yemen, aimed at restoring fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi to power.
In the south and east of the country, UAE forces have worked with the Pentagon allegedly to fight al Qaeda, which has grown significantly since Saudi aggression.
