New details of the "immigrant holocaust" in Sanaa passports
English - Tuesday 09 March 2021 الساعة 03:51 pm
Sanaa, NewsYemen, Exclusive:
African immigrants revealed new information about the reasons for the accumulation of large numbers of them in the detention center of the Immigration and Passports Authority, east of Sana'a, and about the fate of the victims as a result of the fire that broke out in the center two days ago, which resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries.
They explained that the Houthi authorities in Sana'a had arrested thousands of Africans, women and men, from immigrants and Somali and Ethiopian communities, especially the Urmo, and stacked them in the passport detention hangar and blackmailed their families by paying huge sums in exchange for not deporting them and taking them out of custody.
They said that the arbitrary arrests began on Sunday, February 7, 2021 , when they were taken from public streets and from their workplaces in the capital, Sana'a, such as (Al-Azani Center - Al-Jamhouri Hospital - Al-Thawra Hospital), without asking about the cards or identification documents, but rather they were arrested without clear reason.
They indicated that among the detainees were women carrying infants, who did not show mercy to them, and took them to the passport detention hangar, in which there was no longer a place to stand or sit due to the severe overcrowding. It also detained Yemeni birthers, and after finding with them documents proving their identity and affiliation, she asked each one to pay one hundred thousand riyals in exchange for his exit.
Regarding the circumstances of the fire in the detention center, they said that the protest of hundreds of immigrants about the dire situation they are living in in custody, which ended the detention warden to summon security forces to suppress the protesters.
They added that the security forces had thrown bombs into the detainees' ward, which led to a fire. Due to the presence of materials that helped ignite the fires and the occurrence of the disaster, because they were unable to escape from the fire, confirming that a number of detainees were killed immediately, the bodies of some of them were charred, while the number of deaths subsequently increased due to their serious injuries, and they estimated that the total number of injured was more than 300 people.
