The UAE is one of the US’s key allies in the Middle East and the two countries have a close working relationship. Responding to the reports of disappearances and torture, international observers said questions must be asked about the US’s complicity and whether it is using information gathered by the UAE from the prisoners to guide Yemeni raids and strikes.



The Bureau spent weeks investigating reports of disappearances and tracing families of the detained. Many were afraid to talk. The handful who did agree to be interviewed described the time and circumstances of their sons’ arrests in detail, but asked us not to publish anything that might identify them or their children.



One man, who asked to be referred to by the nickname Abu Ali, told the Bureau that he heard a knock on the door of his family home one day last year. It was a group of armed men in beige uniform, which he thinks belongs to the Elite Forces, looking for his son.

“He wasn’t hiding,” said Ali, still perplexed at the violence of the intrusion. “They didn’t need to do it like that.” The men in uniform took his son away.

After asking around, Abu Ali got information that his son was being held in the detention facility at the airbase. Months later, he still doesn’t know what process is taking place in al Riyyan or what will happen to his son. “The law has disappeared in Yemen,” he said.

Disappeared are ordinary working men, say relatives

According to a United Nations (UN) report about Yemen published in January, the Elite Forces were created to counter al Qaeda in the southeastern port city of Mukalla once the Yemeni government reestablished control of the city in April 2016.

Mukalla had previously been under control of the terrorist group for about a year. The operation that liberated it was led by the UAE, and the Emiratis remain a powerful force across the city.

“While nominally under the command of the legitimate Government, [the Elite Forces] are effectively under the operational control of the United Arab Emirates,” says the UN report.