Sharif Mobley, missing in the Yemeni prison system for more than a year, tells his lawyers he is on an army base being targeted in Saudi-led bombing campaign

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A US man missing in the Yemeni prison system for more than a year has used a smuggled mobile phone to tell his lawyers that he is being held on an army base that has been targeted in a Saudi-led bombing campaign.

Sharif Mobley, who has been detained since he was snatched off the streets of the Yemeni capital in 2010, said he feared for his life in his first contact with lawyers from the human rights group Reprieve in more than 12 months.

“Hopefully you guys can do something to get me out of here or get me transferred to another prison because this military base is not safe here,” said Mobley in a recording of the conversation released by Reprieve on Tuesday.

“It’s a very dangerous situation and I don’t know if I’m going to make it out alive,” he said.

Reprieve have been unable to see or speak to their client since he suddenly went missing from pre-trial detention in the country’s capital, Sana’a, in February 2014.

In the new recording, Mobley said he is at “a military base on Hadda Street”, in the city – probably the headquarters of the formerly US-backed Central Security Forces, near the Saudi Arabian embassy.



Warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition have pounded targets in the country’s capital every night for six days since the start of a campaign against Shia Houthi rebels, who forced Yemen’s current president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to flee abroad.

In the worst night of bombing so far, planes repeatedly bombed a weapons depot on Monday night and early Tuesday morning, triggering a massive fire and shaking buildings for miles around.

On Tuesday, the United Nations warned that Yemen “seems to be on the verge of total collapse”.

Speaking to his lawyers on Monday, Mobley said he could hear anti-aircraft guns firing from atop his prison, and that coalition warplanes had attempted to target the building.

“They’re shooting at the Saudi Arabian airplanes from this prison,” he is heard saying.

Reprieve sent a letter to the US State Department on Monday providing it with Mobley’s precise location, in an attempt to get the Obama administration to help him.

Since the Saudis and their Sunni Gulf monarchy allies launched a war they call Operation Decisive Force against the Iran-backed Houthis, the Obama administration has pledged its support, offering logistics, midair refueling and intelligence aid to restore to power a major proxy in its counterterrorism efforts. Reprieve is calling on the State Department to exercise its leverage.

“It is now imperative that the US government makes an immediate intervention with Saudi Arabia at the highest level in order to ensure that Saudi forces do not bomb the base, with the high likelihood that Mr Mobley would be severely injured or killed,” Reprieve’s legal director, Kat Craig, wrote in a letter first reported by NBC News.

The State Department has consistently refused to respond to the Guardian’s year-long inquiries about Mobley, citing concerns for his privacy.

Sharif Mobley: lawyers for man missing in Yemeni prison say US left him behind Read more

In February, a representative confirmed to the Guardian that US diplomats had abandoned him to his fate as they evacuated Yemen: “The United States does not evacuate prisoners in a crisis situation.”

Mobley, who was snatched by masked men in 2010 on terrorism charges which have since been dropped, is not the only American left behind in Yemen.

One of them, Summer Nasser, estimated to Public Radio International on Monday that “hundreds” of Yemeni-Americans have been abandoned by the Obama administration even though several countries including Pakistan have evacuated their nationals. On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the US secretary of state, John Kerry, to follow suit.

On the phone call recording, Mobley said he is currently being held by the National Security Bureau, until recently a close ally of the CIA, and was visited by State Department representatives in December. Echoing a concern passed along by his wife in September, Mobley said he does not have access to clean drinking water.