Ansar Allah, Saudi-backed government discuss prisoner swap in Geneva

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
11 Mar 2023 15:31

From Geneva, the UN special envoy urges Ansar Allah and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government to reach an agreement on prisoner exchange.

UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, speaks to reporters upon his arrival at the Sanaa International Airport, June 8, 2022 (Reuters)

Representatives of the Yemeni Ansar Allah and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government on Saturday kicked off talks in Geneva for an exchange of prisoners, with the UN urging both sides to engage in "serious" discussions.

The new round of closed-door negotiations is being overseen by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"I hope the parties are ready to engage in serious and forthcoming discussions to agree on releasing as many detainees as possible," UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg said in a statement.

The talks -- reportedly set to last 11 days -- mark the seventh meeting aimed at implementing an agreement on prisoner exchanges reached in Stockholm five years ago, the UN noted.

The UN special envoy said it was urgent to reach an agreement.

"With Ramadan approaching, I urge the parties to fulfil the commitments they made, not just to each other, but also to the thousands of Yemeni families who have been waiting to be reunited with their loved ones for far too long," Grundberg said.

The seventh meeting of the Supervisory Committee on the Implementation of the Detainees’ Exchange Agreement started today, Saturday, in Switzerland. The Committee is co-chaired by @OSE_Yemen and @ICRC with the parties to the conflict as members: https://t.co/5oBBapaMbv
— @OSE_Yemen (@OSE_Yemen) March 11, 2023

Under that deal, the sides agreed "to release all prisoners, detainees, missing persons, arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared persons, and those under house arrest," held in connection with the war, "without any exceptions or conditions."

The ICRC noted in a statement to AFP that past meetings mediated by Grundberg's office had "resulted in the release of prisoners on both sides".

"In 2020, more than 1,050 detainees were released and provided with transportation to their region of origin or home country following an agreement reached by the sides," it said.

The latest meeting comes almost a year after Ansar Allah said they had agreed to a prisoner swap that would see 1,400 of its fighters freed in exchange for 823 Saudi-backed or Saudi militants.

But the warring parties have since held a series of talks in the Jordanian capital Amman that did not result in any developments.

"The ICRC is committed to supporting the implementation of future detainee releases and exchanges, and to repatriating or transferring released detainees across front lines back to their respective homes," the organization said.

Emphasizing that it was "a neutral intermediary in this process," the ICRC said it was "not involved in the negotiations on who exactly is going to be released and the identities of the detainees proposed and accepted for exchange by all concerned parties."

In a Twitter post the same day, Ansar Allah delegate to the Geneva talks, Abdul Qader Al-Murtada, said he hoped the negotiations would yield concrete results.

"We hope that this round will be a decisive one," Al-Murtada said.