At least eight people including a southern opposition leader have been “disappeared” after Yemeni security forces detained them in Aden in February 2011, Human Rights Watch said today. Security forces detained five prominent members of the Southern Movement on the night of February 26. Security forces had previously detained a Southern Movement leader, Hassan Baoum, taking him from his hospital bed, along with his son, Fawaz, who brought him to the hospital, on February 20. Baoum chairs the Supreme Council of the Southern Movement, a main organizer of protests in Aden and surrounding areas since 2007 by southerners seeking independence or increased autonomy for the south, which was a separate republic before it was united with the north in 1990. Security forces also detained a Southern Movement activist during a protest on February 11. The whereabouts of all eight detainees remain unknown, relatives told Human Rights Watch. “Snatching and hiding political opposition leaders, including from a hospital, is hardly compatible with the government's claim to protect rights,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “When the security forces ‘disappear' opponents of the government they are enforcing not the law, but the political will of the ruler.” Central Security forces, a unit whose overall commander is President Ali Abdullah Saleh's nephew, Yahya Saleh, raided the apartment of an engineer, Ali bin Ali Shukri, at about 5:30 p.m. on February 26 and arrested him and four of his guests: doctors Abd al-Khaliq Salah Abd al-Qawi and Yahya Shayif al-Sunaibi; college professor ‘Aidarus Muhsin al-Yahari; and Qasim ‘Askar Jubran, a former ambassador to Mauritania of the previously independent southern Yemeni state. Shukri's family told Human Rights Watch that they saw officials from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) outside beginning at about 4:20 p.m. As soon as the guests arrived, said Shukri's son, Amr, about 40 uniformed Central Security members arrived in five four-wheel drives and surrounded the house. About five of them broke into the apartment. He said that the security forces did not identify themselves or give any reason for the arrests, and just took the five men out and put them into the cars. Since then, Amr said, he has not been able to get any information about his father's whereabouts. He told Human Rights Watch: “As soon as they took them away, we went to al-Qahira police station and were told that the detainees were taken to the CID. At CID, they confirmed they had them, but said we could not see them until Sunday afternoon. We came the next day, it was Sunday, and I brought breakfast for my father, but they said he was no longer there. CID said they were transferred to the General Security Department, I went there, and they said they were at the CID! When I went back to CID, they said they were in al-Mansura jail. In the jail the officials said nobody had been brought to them.” The families of Abd al-Qawi, al-Sunaibi, and al-Yahari told Human Rights Watch that they had no information about the fates or whereabouts of their relatives. Abd al-Qawi and al-Yahari called their relatives the night of their arrest to say the five detainees were in the CID. Since then, however, they have not answered their cell phones, and the relatives' efforts to establish their whereabouts have proven futile. Abd al-Qawi's father said that when he visited the CID on February 27, the officials there first said his son had been taken to Aden's al-Mansura jail, then told the father to inquire with the General Security Department. Officials there denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. Abd al-Qawi's brother then went back to the CID and was told that Abd al-Qawi was on a list of detainees to be transferred to Sanaa. Abd al-Qawi's brother said that during the afternoon of February 27 he received information from an acquaintance at Aden airport that all five detainees and another three men had been escorted to a military airplane that was destined for Sanaa. However the families have received no official confirmation of the detainees' location, the reasons for their arrest, or any charges against them. Shukri's son told Human Rights Watch he was extremely concerned about the health of his father, who suffers from diabetes and liver disease and needs to take medication regularly. HRW
