Amnesty urges UK to act to free British man held in Yemen by Houthi rebels

Britain's government must do more to secure the release of a Welsh man who has been held by Yemen's Houthi rebels for almost five years, Amnesty International said earlier this week.

Luke Symons, a 29-year-old from Cardiff, was arrested in April 2017 at a checkpoint in the city of Taiz, southwestern Yemen because he was carrying a British passport, his family allege. He has been held without charge at a Houthi-run facility in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa ever since his arrest.

"Luke has already endured almost five gruelling years behind bars and it’s long overdue that the Government properly engaged with his family and exerted sustained pressure on the Houthis to get him out of jail and back home to Cardiff," said Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s CEO.

Amnesty called on the Houthis "to immediately release Symons unless he is charged with a recognisable crime".

The human rights group said it has contacted the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and called on officials to significantly step up efforts on behalf of the Cardiff man. 

Symons is connected to Yemen through his wife, a Yemeni national. He had previously visited the country in 2012, two years before war broke out between forces allied to the internationally-recognised Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels.

The Houthis have accused him of being a spy for the British government, but has not been charged with any such crime.

Symons was tortured early on in his detention to force him to confess to espionage, his family said. He also suffered a broken arm due to beatings.

Symons is being held in solitary confinement. His family say he told them in a recent phone call that the detentions of his condition were having a major impact on his physical and mental health.

Both the Houthis and the Yemeni government have previously been accused of prisoner rights abuses.

Yemeni government forces have made gains on the Houthis in Taiz province and are closing in on its provincial capital, an army spokesman said earlier this week.