Yemeni lawyer Hameed Al Geheily said that the Iraqi authorities imprisoned 23 Yemenis during the American invasion of Iraq, clarifying that they released nine prisoners in 2012 and 2013, while only one has been released in last October. He added that they still have 13 prisoners in their prisons, including two women.

He added, in a statement to “Arabs Today”, that the prisoners have been brutally tortured during their illegal imprisonment and forced to sign false confessions over resisting the Americans and entering the country in illegal ways. He continued that the authorities confiscated their documents and passports.

He said, “I was briefed on the verdicts issued against the prisoners. It was shocking that the court proceedings lacked the simplest guarantees of justice.”

The verdicts have been issued during the existence of the American troops in Iraq, Gehily said, so the judges depended on the investigations conducted by the American forces who tortured the prisoners and forces them to sign false confessions.

He pointed out that the Yemeni prisoners have not been allowed to choose lawyers to defend them during the trial.

In 2009, the American forces arrested a Yemeni citizen called Ali Mohamed Al Delimy who was living in Iraq for years before the invasion, as he was married to an Iraqi woman. The American forces arrested him in the framework of random imprisonment in the area where he was living.

According to Gehily, the American forces decided to release Delimy in 2011, while the Iraqi authorities transferred him to another prison. He remained there until November 2015. They referred him to trial in March 2016, as he was sentenced to death with his father-in-law.

The Yemeni lawyer called President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi for addressing the Iraqi authorities to suspend the measures against Delimy and to form a committee to follow the cases of Yemenis imprisoned in Iraq.