Yemen Monitor/Newsroom
The Arab Lawyers Union called on Saturday for Arab bar associations and local, regional, and international organizations to oppose the Houthi group’s amendments to the judiciary law in areas under their control in Yemen.
In a press statement, the Arab Lawyers Union said that the Houthi group’s amendments to the judiciary law “represent a serious encroachment on the independence of the judiciary and an infringement on the freedom of the legal profession.”
The union warned that the amendments made by the Houthis “result in imposing division within the single Yemeni homeland, which has been experiencing a state of war for years and continuous attempts to divide Yemen, noting that the “Houthi amendments are one of the tools of division that must be condemned.”
The Arab Lawyers Union stated, “The judiciary cannot be transformed into a mere tool in the hands of the executive authority in clear violation of the provisions of the Yemeni constitution and applicable laws,” stressing the importance of the immunity of defense that must be respected.
The union also affirmed that a lawyer cannot be prevented from pleading due to the defenses and petitions he presents in any case, as is the practice in all local, regional, and international courts, which give the lawyer a special status covered by freedom of expression, independence, and immunity.
The Arab Lawyers Union called for the protection of the judiciary and the Yemeni Bar Association from the violations of the Houthi group, which does not have any constitutional or legal authority to do so.
Yemen Monitor had exclusively reported on Monday about an exceptional Houthi call for a council meeting to amend the judiciary law, reducing the authority of judges, lawyers, and the Supreme Judicial Council, which contradicts the Yemeni constitution.
Lawyer Abdul Majeed Sabra said that these legal texts “have nothing to do with justice or the proper administration of justice, but rather their drafting and adoption are for political purposes to serve the ideology pursued by the Houthi group with its single-minded ideological pattern and orientation.”
According to the new amendments, the law allows for jurists to become judges based on appointment by the head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council. The law also limits the granting of a lawyer’s license to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, rather than the Bar Association.
