Yemen Monitor/Newsroom
Four Yemeni citizens have announced the start of a hunger strike in a Russian prison five days ago in protest against their continued detention, according to sources close to their families.
According to sources from the detainees’ families who spoke to the newspaper “Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed,” the four Yemenis were arrested three months ago by Russian police who placed them in a deportation department outside the capital Moscow.
The sources added that “Mohamed Al-Mouraei, Ibrahim Salim, Mohamed Al-Qadasi, and Khadr Al-Sawadi were arrested for violating the residence system in Russia,” noting that the Russian police arrested them while trying to book a hotel in Moscow a few days after the expiration of the visa on which they entered Russian territory.
The sources indicated that they were imprisoned in difficult conditions and sentenced to a fine and deportation, explaining that “the health condition of one of the detainees, Khadr Al-Sawadi, has deteriorated significantly due to prison conditions, which prompted them to announce a hunger strike.”
The four detainees complained about the neglect of the Yemeni embassy in Moscow regarding their case and its failure to fulfill its duty to follow up on their case and communicate with the Russian authorities about them.
The four detainees appealed to human rights activists and local and international human rights organizations to interact with their case and pressure the Yemeni government to end their suffering in prison and return them to their families in Yemen.
Some Yemeni youth are involved in the ranks of the Russian forces in its war in Ukraine, as the past few months have witnessed the killing of at least two Yemenis while fighting in the ranks of the Russian forces, one of whom was a former diplomat at the Yemeni embassy in Moscow.
According to observers, the presence of many Yemenis in Russia to fight in the ranks of the Russian forces aims to obtain Russian citizenship and financial privileges, while others traveled to Russia to enter European countries from it and obtain asylum, fleeing the Yemeni war that has been raging for nearly ten years.
