{"id":267721,"date":"2023-04-16T07:20:02","date_gmt":"2023-04-16T07:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=267721"},"modified":"2023-04-17T06:51:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T06:51:29","slug":"saudis-among-prisoners-released-in-landmark-exchange-with-yemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=267721","title":{"rendered":"Saudis among prisoners released in landmark exchange with Yemen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Freed prisoners exit an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)-chartered plane after it arrived at Sana\u2019a Airport, Yemen, amid a prisoner swap, in Sana\u2019a, Yemen, on April 14, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)<\/p>\n

Press TV \u2013 April 15, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Scores of prisoners of war, including Saudis, have been freed as part of a cross-border exchange between a Saudi-led military coalition and Yemen’s Ansarullah movement,\u00a0the International Committee of the Red Cross says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The exchange on Saturday\u00a0was\u00a0part of a multi-day transfer involving nearly 900 detainees, that comes amid peace talks which have raised hopes for an end to an\u00a0eight-year-old war on Yemen.<\/p>\n

The flight from the southern Saudi city of Abha took off\u00a0before 9 a.m. local time (0600 GMT), carrying 120 former detainees who\u00a0headed for Yemen’s\u00a0capital Sana’a,\u00a0ICRC spokeswoman Jessica Moussan said.<\/p>\n

It was followed by a flight from Sana’a to Riyadh carrying 20 former detainees, among them 16 Saudis and three Sudanese, that landed around midday local time, according to the state-affiliated al-Ekhbariya channel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe release operations are the result of talks concluded on March 20, 2023 in Bern, Switzerland, where the parties to the conflict in Yemen finalized the plan for the release. The ICRC co-chaired these meetings with the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen,\u201d the ICRC said.<\/p>\n

Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC\u2019s regional director for the Near and Middle East, noted, \u201cWith this act of goodwill, hundreds of families torn apart by conflict are being reunited during the holy month of Ramadan, a glimmer of hope amidst great suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur deep desire is that these releases provide momentum for a broader political solution, leading to even more detainees returning to their loved ones,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The development comes a day after the Saudi-backed Yemen’s Presidential\u00a0Leadership\u00a0Council and Ansarullah movement exchanged 322 prisoners, marking a significant confidence-building measure and a major step toward peace in the warn-torn Arab country.<\/p>\n

\n
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Saudis meet Ansarullah officials ahead of ceasefire talks. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A total of 72 prisoners were sent from Sana\u2019a airport to Aden airport on board two flights, and 250 Ansarullah captives on two flights from Aden to Sana\u2019a.<\/p>\n

High-profile figures, including Nasser Mansour Hadi, brother of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and Mahmoud al-Subeihi, former defense minister in the deposed government, were among those being freed.<\/p>\n

After the planes touched down at Aden airport, the families of the released prisoners shed tears of joy and greeted their loved ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exchange of prisoners is a positive step. We hope that all captives will eventually be released and the search for the missing will begin with a positive outcome. This is an important step in the humanitarian process as well as a big step towards peace,\u201d Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, Chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee of Yemen, said.<\/p>\n

All parties to the conflict in Yemen agreed at\u00a0negotiations in Switzerland\u00a0last month to free 887 detainees and to meet again in May to discuss further releases. The deal was overseen by the United Nations envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, and the ICRC.<\/p>\n

Riyadh and Tehran last month\u00a0agreed to restore diplomatic ties\u00a0severed in 2016, raising hopes Yemen\u2019s peace process will see progress.<\/p>\n

A Saudi delegation on Thursday concluded peace talks in Sana\u2019a with officials from the Ansarullah movement. The Yemeni officials cited progress and said further discussions were needed to iron out remaining differences.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u00a0launched the bloody war against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states to reinstall Hadi, who resigned from the presidency in late 2014 and later fled to Riyadh amid a political conflict with the popular Ansarullah movement.<\/p>\n

The war objective was also to crush the Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.<\/p>\n

However, it has stopped well shy of all of its goals, despite killing tens of thousands of Yemenis and turning the entire country into the scene of the world\u2019s worst humanitarian crisis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As U.S. influence has waned, peace and stability has begun to return with prisoner exchanges and ceasefires between the Saudis and Yemen’s Ansarullah movement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":267722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=267721"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267751,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267721\/revisions\/267751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/267722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=267721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=267721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}