Rights groups document Houthi detention campaign that held activist Sahar al-Khawlani
Yemen Herald News 
SANAA, Yemen — Yemeni activist Sahar al-Khawlani was released from Houthi detention on Feb. 5, 2025, after more than five months in custody, Barran Press reported.
She was seized from her home in Sanaa on Sept. 10, 2024, in a raid that followed social media posts criticising Houthi authorities over corruption, according to Barran Press and Yemen Online.
Her children were held with her and freed at the same time, both outlets reported.
In a video recorded after her release and reviewed by Barran Press, al-Khawlani said she and her children were in good health. She thanked her parents and those who had asked after her while she was held.
Al-Khawlani had built an audience by criticising the Houthi administration from inside Sanaa rather than from exile. Her posts dealt with unpaid public-sector salaries, corruption and the cost of schooling.
Women Journalists Without Chains, a Yemeni press-freedom organisation, said during her detention that her health had deteriorated and that she had been subjected to physical and psychological mistreatment. The group called for her unconditional release and for medical care.
The Houthi authorities did not publicly respond to that account. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of the mistreatment allegation beyond the organisation’s own statements.
Reports circulated in 2026 that al-Khawlani’s home was raided a second time. No rights organisation or news agency has published a confirmed account of such a raid, and Yemen Herald could not verify it.
Her case falls within a pattern that international monitors have recorded across Houthi-controlled territory.
Human Rights Watch said on Nov. 27, 2025 that Houthi authorities had detained dozens of political opponents since July 2025, including the leaders of several political parties. Some of the cases may amount to enforced disappearances, the organisation said.
At least 70 people associated with the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, known as Islah, were detained within 24 hours in Dhamar governorate on Oct. 28, 2025, according to the group.
Those arrests brought the number of Islah members held to more than 200, the party said in a statement cited by Human Rights Watch.
Most of those taken in October were not party officials but government employees, teachers and social figures, Najeeb al-Sheghdari of the Musawah Organization for Human Rights and Freedoms told the organisation.
An Islah spokesman, Adnan al-Odaini, told the organisation that the campaign against his party began after Houthi forces tried to arrest Sheikh Saleh Hantos, a religious scholar in Rayma governorate, on July 1, 2025, and killed him. The Houthis accused Hantos of taking positions aligned with the United States and Israel.
Houthi authorities detained Rami Abdulwahab, an official of the Arab Socialist Baath Party, on Aug. 3, 2025, and Ghazi al-Ahwal, secretary general of the General People’s Congress, on Aug. 20, Human Rights Watch said.
On Sept. 25 they detained Aaidh al-Sayadi, deputy secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party in Dhamar governorate. Relatives of Abdulwahab and al-Sayadi said the two men were not allowed family visits or permitted to appoint lawyers.
The son of one Islah detainee said his father was taken from his car by armed masked men in Dhamar in November. He and the families of six other detainees said no arrest warrants were produced and they were not told where their relatives were being taken.
At least 59 United Nations staff were in detention without access to lawyers and with limited or no contact with their families, Human Rights Watch said.
The organisation also reported a trial of 21 people in which 17 were sentenced to death, many charged with espionage without adequate access to due process.
“Rather than addressing the urgent needs of Yemenis in Houthi-controlled territories, the Houthis seem to be detaining anyone they deem a threat to their movement,” said Niku Jafarnia, the group’s Yemen and Bahrain researcher.
The UN Panel of Experts on Yemen wrote in its 2025 report that the Houthi judiciary “has been weaponized to suppress dissent and free expression.” Detainees are often not shown arrest warrants, not presented with formal charges and denied legal counsel, the panel said.
Houthi forces entered the Sanaa office of Abdulmajeed Sabra, a lawyer who had represented detainees, on Sept. 25, 2025, and took him to an undisclosed location, Human Rights Watch said.
Arresting a person without a warrant and clear charges breaches article 132 of the Yemeni Criminal Procedures Law, the organisation said. Article 6 of the same law nullifies statements obtained under torture or inhumane treatment.
Human Rights Watch has previously recorded Houthi forces detaining and forcibly disappearing dozens of people over their political affiliation, including 25 Islah members taken from Dhamar in April 2020.
The wider campaign has run for about 18 months and has taken in civil society members, UN and nongovernmental organisation staff, businesspeople and people inside the Houthi administration, the organisation said.
The Houthi movement took Sanaa in 2014 and has detained people affiliated with opposition parties since then, according to Human Rights Watch, which said arrests increased in the second half of 2025.
Human Rights Watch reported separately in January 2026 that Houthi detentions of aid workers had disrupted humanitarian operations in the country.
Women Journalists Without Chains is headed by Tawakkol Karman, a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.
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