Houthi militias' ransom to free prisoners: $3,000

More than 10,000 persons were detained and kidnapped by the Houthi militias, most of them young men, journalists and social media activists and bloggers, the Arab Centre for Human Rights and Anti-Terrorism (ACHA) has revealed.

"Youth are being arrested on a daily basis and the number of those arrested in the capital Sanaa alone ranges between 100 to 200 daily," the ACHA said in a statement, adding that prisons were now crammed with detainees who were transferred after they had spent seven to 10 days in police stations.

Some of them were sent to political security prisons.

"Houthi militias are savagely torturing a number of prisoners and scanning their mobile phones, confiscating them and were using them for acts that blatantly violated all local and international laws and norms.

"They were flagrantly flouting all values and principles," the statement noted.

The militias demanded ransom amounts ranging between $500 to $3,000 to release any prisoner who wanted to walk to freedom and those who refused to pay were being sent to even more notorious prisons.

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