UN Experts accused governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates of being responsible for war crimes during more than three years of aggression against Yemen.
In a report released by the UN’s human rights council, three UN experts said the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen may have been responsible for war crimes including rape, torture, disappearances and “deprivation of the right to life”.
The report was referring to the Saudi-backed exiled government as the “Yemeni government.”
has been since March 2015 under brutal aggression by Saudi-led coalition, in a bid to restore control to fugitive president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi who is Riyadh’s ally.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured in the strikes launched by the coalition, with the vast majority of them are civilians.
The coalition, which includes in addition to Saudi Arabia and UAE: Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan and Kuwait, has been also imposing a harsh blockade against Yemenis.
In their first report the experts also point to the damage from coalition airstrikes over the last year.
“[We have] reasonable grounds to believe that the governments of Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are responsible for human rights violations,” the report said. It cited unlawful deprivation of the right to life, arbitrary detention, rape, torture, enforced disappearances and child recruitment among the violations.
The UN experts urged the international community to “refrain from providing arms that could be used in the conflict” – an apparent reference to countries such as the US and Britain that have helped to arm the Saudi-led coalition.
The experts visited some but not all parts of Yemen as they compiled the report.
It also accused the “de facto authorities” – an allusion to Houthi revolutionaries that control have been confronting the Saudi-led aggression of “crimes including arbitrary detentions, torture and child recruitment.”
Source: Agencies
