Former prisoners, Yemeni officials and human rights lawyers say the United Arab Emirates and allied Yemeni forces are running a network of secret prisons across southern Yemen where hundreds of people detained in the hunt for al-Qaeda militants have disappeared and where torture and abuse are widespread.
The United Arab Emirates runs at least two "informal detention facilities" in Yemen and has reportedly transferred detainees to a base in Eritrea, Human Rights Watch said.
The UAE is a key member of a Saudi-led military coalition that entered Yemen's conflict in 2015 to battle on the government's side against Iran-backed Huthi rebels.
HRW said UAE officials appeared to have "moved high-profile detainees outside the country" including to a base in Eritrea.
Children detained
The rights group said it had documented 49 cases, including those of four children, who had been "arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared" - at least 38 of them by UAE-backed forces.
The New York-based group said the UAE also runs detention facilities in southern provinces home to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and a local affiliate of the Islamic State group.
Children are among those detained in the centres, it said.
It said Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies, forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, had also "arbitrarily detained and disappeared scores of people in northern Yemen".
In this May 11 2017 photo, families showed lists of detainees held in Mukalla's Riyan prison which is run by the United Arab Emiratis. Source: AAP
“You don’t effectively fight extremist groups like Al-Qaeda or ISIS by disappearing dozens of young men and constantly adding to the number of families with ‘missing’ loved ones in Yemen,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
The Associated Press also interviewed lawyers and families who estimate nearly 2,000 men have disappeared into the system.
In its investigation American defence officials confirmed that US forces have interrogated some detainees in Yemen but denied any participation in or knowledge of human rights abuses.
The Associated Press describes former inmates who said they were crammed into shipping containers in the southern Yemeni city of Mukalla, smeared with faeces and blindfolded for weeks on end.
It says they were beaten, rotated on a spit and sexually assaulted, among other abuse, with American forces at times "only yards away."
“We could hear the screams,” said a former detainee held for six months.
Pentagon says US not involved
Chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White told the Associated Press that the Defense Department has “found no credible evidence to substantiate that the US is participating in any abuse”.
However, legal experts say American participation could violate the International Convention Against Torture, by which obtaining intelligence that may have been extracted by torture inflicted by another party would constitute complicity.
The UAE, a key US ally, is part of the Saudi-led coalition fighting on the side of the government in Yemen against Shiite rebels while also battling al-Qaeda's branch in the country.
Civilian toll
The World Health Organisation estimates more than 8,000 people have been killed in two years of conflict in Yemen, which also faces a deadly cholera outbreak and the threat of famine.
All parties in Yemen's war have drawn harsh criticism for causing civilian suffering.
The United Nations and HRW have said air strikes by the Saudi-led alliance have killed many civilians and may amount to war crimes.
