The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council on January 27, 2026, detained members of Yemen’s National Commission for the Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights, an independent national body investigating violations by all warring parties in Yemen.
The members were detained for three hours, after they visited an unofficial detention center run by the STC in Socotra, then released ordered not to visit the detention center again. Later that same day, the STC detained two former detainees the commission had interviewed
One member of the Commission said the detention center “was among the worst things [the Commission] have seen.”
Human Rights Watch and the Associated Press have previously documented “secret” detention facilities run by both the UAE and UAE-backed forces.
The following quote can be attributed to Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch:
“The Southern Transitional Council has for years maintained secret prisons in Yemen where they’ve carried out significant abuses against people they have arbitrarily detained, and often forcibly disappeared. Now, they’re even detaining those looking into those abuses. They I should be held accountable for their rampant violations.”
