Yemen’s warring parties discuss in Switzerland prisoner swaps before Ramadan

The talks follow-up from a 2018 agreement that demanded both parties release all detained in relation to the conflict. (File/AFP)
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Updated 11 March 2023
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Yemen’s warring parties discuss in Switzerland prisoner swaps before Ramadan

  • The talks are co-chaired by UN envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg and the International Committee of the Red Cross

AL-MUKALLA: A new round of UN-brokered talks between the Iran-backed Houthis and the internationally recognized government on a prisoner swap began on Saturday in the Swiss city of Bern.

If successful, officials and analysts say, hundreds of detained Yemenis would be released, and it would be a major step toward more comprehensive negotiations to end the war in Yemen.

The Yemen UN Envoy Hans Grundberg said that the seventh meeting of the Supervisory Committee on the Implementation of the Detainees’ Exchange Agreement convened on Saturday in Switzerland under the auspices of his office and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Yemenis will work to discuss the unconditional release of all prisoners, detainees and missing persons.

“I hope the parties are ready to engage in serious and forthcoming discussions to agree on releasing as many detainees as possible,” Grundberg said, urging Yemeni negotiators to work as hard as they could to produce real achievements that may free thousands of Yemenis before the holy month of Ramadan begins on March 23.

“With Ramadan approaching, I urge the parties to fulfill the commitments they made, not just to each other but also to the thousands of Yemeni families who have been waiting to be reunited with their loved ones for far too long.”

The UN and regional and international mediators have been pushing Yemeni sides to reach an agreement to free thousands of inmates, inspired by a significant halt in hostilities throughout the country since April last year under the UN-brokered truce.

The latest big prisoner exchange between the Houthis and the Yemeni government occurred in October 2020, with over 1,000 prisoners released.

Earlier rounds of discussions between the two parties failed to result in the release of captives, as Yemeni sides accused each other of requesting the release of fake names and even wanting to swap civilian abductees with warriors.

Majed Fadhail, deputy minister of human rights and a member of the government’s six-man delegation, said the talks would last for 11 days and that the government delegation would focus on exchanging all prisoners with the Houthis.

He added that the Presidential Leadership Council and the government had ordered them to ensure the success of the negotiations.

“Every day that an abducted person remains in jail is a source of enormous agony not just for his or her family, but also for us in the government since we share their anguish,” Fadhail said, according to the official news agency SABA.

Abdul Kader Al-Murtadha, head of the Houthi delegation, expressed hope that the discussions would yield “decisive” outcomes.

At the same time, Yemeni human rights advocates, organizations, and families of detainees and abductees have urged Yemeni factions to ease the suffering of thousands of detainees and abductees.

Amat Al-Salam Al-Hajj, chairperson of the Abductees’ Mothers Association, an umbrella group representing thousands of female family members of civilian war captives, called on all parties to emerge from the negotiations with an agreement to free all detainees throughout the country.

“I hope that these discussions will result in comprehensive solutions and the release of all abducted people. Their families and children have suffered for eight years while they have been tormented in jails,” she told Arab News.

Yemen’s Journalist Syndicate made another appeal to Yemeni negotiators to work for the release of imprisoned journalists, mainly four detained by the Houthis and condemned to death.

“As discussions begin on the file of prisoners and detainees, we appeal that the case of the abducted journalists is given priority and attention since they are innocent civilians who have been subjected to the cruelest kinds of torture and abuse,” the syndicate said.


King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation

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King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation

  • Donation will fund healthcare, protect children, provide emergency cash 

LONDON: King Charles III has helped pay for urgent humanitarian aid needed in Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad.

Charles made an undisclosed donation to International Rescue Committee UK to fund healthcare, protect children and provide emergency cash.

The king is the patron of the charity, which says Syria is facing profound humanitarian needs despite the defeat of the Assad regime by opposition forces.

Khusbu Patel, IRC UK’s acting executive director, said: “His Majesty’s contribution underscores his deep commitment to addressing urgent global challenges, and helping people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover and rebuild their lives.

“We are immensely grateful to His Majesty The King for his donation supporting our work in Syria. This assistance will enable us to provide essential services, including healthcare, child protection and emergency cash, to those people most in need.”

The charity said it was scaling-up its efforts in northern Syria to evaluate the urgent needs of communities. Towns and villages have become accessible to aid groups for the first time in years now that rebel forces have taken control of much of the country.

The charity said Syria ranks fourth on its emergency watchlist for 2025 and a recent assessment found that people in the northeast of the country were facing unsafe childbirth conditions, cold-related illnesses, water contamination, and shortages of medical supplies.

Charles last month said he would be “praying for Syria” as he attended a church service in London attended by various faiths.

The king met Syrian nun Sister Annie Demerjian at the event, who described the situation in her homeland after the regime had been swept from power.


Israeli strike targets facilities in Aleppo: Syrian state tv 

Updated 6 min 31 sec ago
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Israeli strike targets facilities in Aleppo: Syrian state tv 

CAIRO: An Israeli strike targeted military facilities at Safira town in Syria’s Aleppo, Syrian state television reported early on Friday. 

(Developing story)


After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader

Updated 24 min 10 sec ago
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After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader

ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party met Thursday with the parliamentary speaker and far-right MHP leader amid tentative efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the banned PKK militant group. DEM’s three-person delegation met with Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and then with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli.

The aim was to brief them on a rare weekend meeting with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party who is serving life without parole on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.

It was the Ocalan’s first political visit in almost a decade and follows an easing of tension between Ankara and the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil and is proscribed by Washington and Brussels as a terror group.

The visit took place two months after Bahceli extended a surprise olive branch to Ocalan, inviting him to parliament to disband the PKK and saying he should be given the “right to hope” in remarks understood to moot a possible early release.

Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tentative opening came a month before Syrian rebels began a lightning 12-day offensive that ousted Bashar Assad in a move which has forced Turkiye’s concerns about the Kurdish issue into the headlines.

During Saturday’s meeting with DEM lawmakers Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, Ocalan said he had “the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr.Bahceli and Mr.Erdogan.”

Onder and Buldan then “began a round of meetings with the parliamentary parties” and were joined on Thursday by Ahmet Turk, 82, a veteran Kurdish politician with a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.


Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links

Updated 29 min 3 sec ago
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Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links

SULAIMANIYAH: Authorities in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah have banned four organizations accused of affiliation with the Turkish-blacklisted Kurdistan Workers Party, activists said Thursday, denouncing the move as “political.”

The four organizations include two feminist groups and a media production house, according to the METRO center for press freedoms which organized a news conference in Sulaimaniyah to criticize the decision.

PKK fighters have several positions in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases used to strike Kurdish insurgents.

Ankara and Washington both deem the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye, a terrorist organization.

Authorities in Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s second city, have been accused of leniency toward PKK activities.

But the Iraqi federal authorities in Baghdad have recently sharpened their tone against the Turkish Kurdish insurgents.

Col. Salam Abdel Khaleq, the spokesman for the Kurdish Asayesh security forces in Sulaimaniyah, told AFP that the bans came “after a decision from the Iraqi judiciary and as a result of the expiration of the licenses” of these groups.


Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September

Updated 34 min 45 sec ago
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Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said on Thursday its special forces raided an underground missile production site in Syria in September that it said was primed to produce hundreds of precision missiles for use against Israel by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

The complex near Masyaf, in Hama province close to the Mediterranean coast, was “the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region,” Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told a briefing with reporters.

“This facility was designed to manufacture hundreds of strategic missiles per year from start to finish, for Hezbollah to use in their aerial attacks on Israel,” he said.

He said the plant, dug into the side of a mountain, had been under observation by Israeli intelligence since construction work began in 2017 and was on the point of being able to manufacture precision-guided long-range missiles, some of them with a range of up to 300 km (190 miles).

“This ability was becoming active, so we’re talking about an immediate threat,” he said.

Details of the Sept. 8 raid have been reported in the Israeli media in recent days but Shoshani said this was the first confirmation by the military, which usually does not comment on special forces operations of this type.

At the time, Syrian state media said at least 16 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the west of the country.

Shoshani said the hours-long nighttime raid was “one of the more complex operations the IDF has done in recent years.” Accompanied by airstrikes, it involved dozens of aircraft and around 100 helicopter-borne troops, who located weapons and seized documents, he said.

“At the end of the raid, the troops dismantled the facility, including the machines and the manufacturing equipment themselves,” he said, adding that dismantling the plant was “key to ensure the safety of Israel.”

Israeli officials have accused the former Syrian government of President Bahar Assad of helping the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement receive arms from Iran and say they are determined to stop the flow of weapons into Lebanon.

As Bashar Assad’s government crumbled toward the end of last year, Israel launched a series of strikes against Syrian military infrastructure and weapons manufacturing sites to ensure they did not fall into the hands of its enemies.