Human-rights group appeals to US diplomats for proof of life from Sharif Mobley after Saudi air strikes targeting Yemen capital leave at least 80 dead

Fears are growing over the fate of an American citizen trapped in a Yemeni military prison after a Saudi air strike bombed the compound where his lawyers believe he is held.

American Sharif Mobley in call from Yemeni jail: 'They're trying to kill me' Read more

At least 80 people are thought to have died on Wednesday in a string of air strikes targeting the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and other sites near the Saudi border. The death toll was the highest in a single day in Saudi Arabia’s US-backed war to oust Houthi rebels who overthrew Washington proxy Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi earlier this year.

Since the Houthi takeover, Sharif Mobley, a 31-year-old US citizen who disappeared from his pre-trial detention in February 2014, has smuggled cellphone calls from what he described as a “military base on Hadda Street” to warn family and attorneys that his life is in extreme danger.

The attack leveled at least three buildings, sending plumes of black smoke into the air, according to an Associated Press reporter, who said the attack also set fire to the base, and caused a series of secondary explosions in weapons depots at the site.

Attorneys with the human-rights group Reprieve wrote to the US State Department urging the diplomats, who left Mobley and other US citizens to their fate after closing their embassy, to provide them with proof of life and to directly facilitate communication with Mobley.

“We are extremely concerned for the fate of Mr Mobley, and require the US government to take immediate and visible steps to provide us with proof that Mr Mobley is still alive, and that if he has been wounded, that he has been evacuated to receive appropriate emergency medical care,” wrote Reprieve’s legal director, Kat Craig, in a Wednesday letter obtained by the Guardian.

US diplomats have met with Mobley at least once during his disappearance. They have refused to tell his lawyers or his family where their Yemeni partners held him and issued a blanket assurance that he was well – one Mobley later contradicted by alleging physical and mental abuse in custody, including being forced to drink from water bottles that had contained urine.

The State Department has declined to substantively comment on Mobley to the Guardian for over a year, citing his privacy. It has yet to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act request for documentation of US-Yemeni communication about Mobley’s capture and detention, with which there is evidence of US complicity.

Armed men captured Mobley in Sana’a in January 2010, shooting him in the leg. Soon after, interrogators identifying themselves as agents of the FBI and Defense Department interviewed him about Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist. Mobley’s advocates categorically insist he was never involved in terrorism. While Yemen never charged him with a terrorism-related offense, Yemenis claim he killed a guard in an attempt to escape from his hospital.

Smuggled phone calls from Mobley in recent months have warned that Saudi warplanes were taking anti-aircraft fire from the roof of the building where he is held. On 14 May, a frantic Mobley called his sister to say his jailers were beating him with sticks: “They’re trying to kill me here at the prison.”

Reprieve’s Craig, in her letter to the State Department, reminded US diplomats of her request to share coordinate information on Mobley’s location with their Saudi allies in order to spare his life.

“It is a matter of deep concern to us that these steps have clearly not been taken, and we intend pursuing this matter vigorously,” Craig wrote.