Independent UN experts urge Yemen’s Houthis to free detained Baha'i followers

CAIRO (AP) — Human rights experts working for the United Nations on Monday urged Yemen’s Houthi rebels to release five people from the country’s Baha’i religious minority who have been in detention for a year.

The five are among 17 Baha’i followers detained last May when the Houthis raided a Baha’i gathering in the capital of Sanaa. The experts said in a statement that 12 have since been released “under very strict conditions” but that five remain “detained in difficult circumstances.”

There have long been concerns about the treatment of the members of the Baha’i minority at the hands of the Yemeni rebels, known as Houthis, who have ruled much of the impoverished Arab country’s north and the capital, Sanaa, since the civil war started in 2014.

The experts said they “urge the de facto authorities to release” the five remaining detainees, warning they were at “serious risk of torture and other human rights violations, including acts tantamount to enforced disappearance.”