Rights Group Sues Abu Dhabi Crown Prince over UAE Crimes in Yemen

Rasa - A French human rights group on Wednesday announced that it has filed a criminal complaint against the crown prince of Abu Dhabi for his role in the devastating war in Yemen.

News ID: 441689

Date: 23 November 2018 - 13:09

RNA - The Alliance for the Defence of Rights and Freedoms (AIDL) accused Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan of war crimes, complicity in torture and inhumane treatment in Yemen, World News reported.

Joseph Breham, a lawyer of AIDL, told reporters that the group was suing Al Nahyan for the UAE’s actions in the war in Yemen as well as “complicity in inhumane treatment and bloodshed”.

"It's in this capacity that he has ordered bombings on Yemeni territory," the complaint filed by the lawyer said on Wednesday.

Noting that Yemenis were among the plaintiffs against bin Zayed, Breham stated that the crown prince has been held responsible in the complaint for the ongoing conflict.

The lawsuit was filed in a Paris court during Al-Nahyan's visit to France.

The move came on a day when the crown prince, who is also second-in-command of the UAE Armed Forces, travelled to French capital Paris for a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron.

An aid group reported on Wednesday that as many as 85,000 children in Yemen starved to death in the past three years during its brutal war. The humanitarian agency, Save the Children, found some 84,701 children may have starved to death between April 2015 and October 2018 because of a lack of food.

The World Food Programme has also stated that up to 14 million Yemenis are now at risk of starvation as fighting rages in Hudaydah.

Saudi Arabia and its allies have been striking Yemen since March 2015 to restore power to fugitive president Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed thousands of Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children. Despite Riyadh's claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the coalition countries heavily involved in the war in Yemen, where it regularly takes part in bombing raids.

Official UN figures say that more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led bombing campaign began in March 2015. But the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) believes that at least 56,000 people have lost their lives in the war. The violence has also left around two-thirds of Yemen’s population of 27 million relying on aid amid an ongoing strict naval and aerial blockade. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.

Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people in need and is seeing a spike in needs, fuelled by ongoing conflict, a collapsing economy and diminished social services and livelihoods.

A number of Western countries, the US, the UK, and France in particular, are accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.

An Oxfam representative stated that the US, UK, and French governments are behind millions of people starving in Yemen because they are “supporting this war".

“We have 14 million people starving,” Richard Stanforth, Oxfam UK’s regional policy officer for the Middle East, told RT, adding that "British, French, American governments are all behind this, they are all supporting this war".

A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.

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