BBC sees UAE-run secret prisons

The BBC has been given entry to detention amenities on former United Arab Emirates navy bases in Yemen, confirming long-standing allegations of a community of secret prisons run by the UAE and forces allied to it in Yemen’s decade-long civil warfare.

One former detainee informed the BBC he had been crushed and sexually abused at one of many websites.

We noticed cells at two bases within the south of the nation, together with transport containers with names – apparently of detainees – and dates scratched into the edges.

The UAE didn’t reply to our request for remark, however has beforehand denied related allegations.

Till lately, the Yemeni authorities, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, was allied with the UAE towards the Houthi insurgent motion which controls north-west Yemen.

However the alliance between Yemen’s two Gulf state companions has fractured. UAE forces pulled out of Yemen in early January and Yemeni authorities forces and teams allied to them have retaken massive swathes of the south from separatists backed by the UAE.

This consists of the port of Mukalla, the place we landed in a Saudi navy airplane and had been taken to go to the previous UAE navy bases within the Al-Dhaba Oil Export Space.

It has been virtually unattainable for worldwide journalists to get visas to report from Yemen lately, however the authorities invited reporters to view the 2 websites, accompanied by Yemen’s Data Minister Moammar al-Eryani.

What we noticed was according to accounts now we have gathered independently, each in our earlier reporting and likewise interviews performed in Yemen, individually from the government-run web site go to.

At one web site, there have been about 10 transport containers, their interiors painted black, with little air flow.

Messages on the partitions appeared to mark the dates detainees mentioned they had been introduced in, or to depend the variety of days they’d been held.

A number of had been dated as lately as December 2025.

At one other navy base, the BBC was proven eight cells constructed from brick and cement, together with a number of measuring about one metre sq. and two metres tall, which Eryani mentioned had been used for solitary confinement.

Human rights teams have documented testimony describing such amenities for years.

Yemeni lawyer Huda al-Sarari has been gathering accounts.

The BBC independently attended a gathering she organised, the place about 70 folks had been current who mentioned they’d been held in Mukalla, in addition to the households of one other 30 who they mentioned their family members had been nonetheless in detention.

A number of former detainees informed us that every transport container might maintain as much as 60 males at a time.

They mentioned prisoners had been blindfolded, certain on the wrists and compelled to stay sitting upright in any respect hours.

“There was no house to lie down,” one former prisoner informed the BBC. “If somebody collapsed, the others needed to maintain him up.”

The person additionally informed the BBC he was crushed for 3 days after his arrest, with interrogators demanding he confess to being a member of al-Qaeda – an accusation he denies.

“They informed me if I did not admit it, I’d be despatched to ‘Guantanamo’,” he mentioned, referring to the US navy detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

“I did not even know what they meant by Guantanamo till they took me to their jail. Then I understood.”

He mentioned he was held there for a yr and a half, crushed day by day and abused.

“They did not even feed us correctly,” he mentioned. “For those who needed the bathroom, they took you as soon as. Generally you had been so determined you probably did it on your self.”

He says his captors included Emirati troopers in addition to Yemeni fighters: “All varieties of torture – once we had been interrogated it was the worst. They even sexually abused us and mentioned they’d carry within the ‘physician’.

“This so-called physician was Emirati. He beat us and informed the Yemeni troopers to beat us too. I attempted to kill myself a number of occasions to make it finish.”

The UAE was main a counter-terror marketing campaign in southern Yemen, however human rights teams say hundreds of individuals had been detained in crackdowns on political activists and critics.

A mom informed us her son was detained as a teen and has been held for 9 years.

“My son was an athlete,” she mentioned. “He had simply come again from competing overseas. That day he went to the fitness center and by no means got here again.”

“I did not hear from him for seven months,” she mentioned.

“Then they let me see him for 10 minutes. I might see all of the scars of the torture.”

She alleged that within the jail on the Emirati-run base, her teenage son was electrocuted, doused with ice-cold water and sexually abused a number of occasions.

She says she attended a listening to wherein her son’s accusers performed a recording of him apparently confessing.

“You possibly can hear him being crushed within the background and informed what to say,” she mentioned. “My son just isn’t a terrorist. You may have robbed him of the perfect years of his life.”

Over the previous decade, human rights teams and media organisations – together with the BBC and Related Press – have documented allegations of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance and torture in detention centres run by the UAE and its allies.

Human Rights Watch mentioned in 2017 it had gathered testimonies of detainees held with out cost or judicial oversight in unofficial amenities, and subjected to beatings, electrical shocks and different types of unwell remedy.

The UAE denied these allegations once they had been made.

The BBC despatched detailed allegations to the UAE authorities concerning the detention websites we visited and accounts of abuse, however acquired no response.

All sides have been accused of human rights violations within the civil warfare, which has sparked a devastating humanitarian disaster within the nation.

Households of detainees informed the BBC they’d repeatedly raised issues with Yemeni authorities.

They consider it will have been unattainable for the UAE and its allies to run a detention community with out the Yemeni authorities and its Saudi backers understanding about it.

The data minister, Eryani, mentioned: “We weren’t in a position to entry areas that had been below UAE management till now.

“Once we liberated them we found these prisons… we had been informed by many victims that they existed however we did not consider it was true.”

His authorities’s resolution to offer entry to worldwide media comes because the rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is widening.

Their long-strained relationship deteriorated in December when UAE-backed southern separatists, the Southern Transition Council (STC), seized territory managed by authorities forces in two western provinces.

Saudi Arabia then carried out a strike on what it mentioned was a cargo of weapons from the UAE to the STC in Mukalla, and backed a requirement from Yemen’s presidential council for Emirati forces to depart the nation instantly.

The UAE withdrew and inside days authorities forces and their allies retook management of the western provinces in addition to all the south.

Nevertheless, remaining separatists threaten the federal government’s place in some locations, together with the southern port of Aden.

The UAE denied that the cargo had contained weapons and likewise Saudi allegations that it was behind the STC’s latest navy marketing campaign.

On 12 January 2026, the president of Yemen’s Presidential Management Council, which oversees the federal government, Rashad al-Alimi, ordered the closure of all “unlawful” prisons in southern provinces beforehand managed by the STC, demanding the speedy launch of these “held outdoors the framework of the legislation”.

Eryani mentioned some detainees had been found contained in the amenities, however didn’t give numbers or additional particulars.

Some family members – together with the mom of the athlete – informed the BBC that detainees have since been transferred to prisons now nominally below authorities management.

Yemeni authorities say transferring prisoners into the formal justice system is advanced, whereas rights teams warn arbitrary detention might merely proceed below totally different management.

“The terrorists are out on the streets,” the mom mentioned.

“Our sons should not terrorists.”