Twenty three year-old Yemeni, Rashid Ali Yahya al-Masuri, was scheduled to return to his country late last year, following a special Presidential amnesty which also included 6 other Yemenis who, for their part, returned to Sana'a in mid-October 2012. However, the Iraqi authorities detained Rashid al-Masuri again in the final moments of his transfer, under the pretext that there was another charge that hadn't been brought against him during the previous trials. This immediately raised the concern of his family and who feared that it might just be a further reason to prolong his stay in the Iraqi prisons, without taking into account the tragedy that the victim had suffered throughout the years, and which his family shared in, anxiously awaiting his return.

The Iraqi authorities did however release six of the Yemeni detainees. They arrived to Sana'a International Airport on Wednesday 14 October 2012, while 18 other Yemenis remained detained in Iraqi prisons, including 31 years old, Hasna Ali Yahya Husayn, sentenced to life imprisonment, and the youth, Salih Musa Ahmad al-Bidani, sentenced to death in an unfair trial. The Iraqi government finally decided to grant him a retrial.

These Yemenis will remain in Iraq for varying prison terms on charges of crossing the border illegally. They were often subjected to torture and mistreatment. Six of them were released, as noted above, under a presidential pardon that was issued in their favor. The amnesty also includes the young Yemeni prisoner Rashid al-Masuri. The Iraqi Government in Baghdad postponed his release for reasons that are not clear, where he was detained another time hours before his deportation, despite moving him with his companions, early last October, from the Susah prison in the Kurdistan region of Iraq to Baghdad in preparation for his release.

Alkarama had previously submitted to the relevant United Nations procedures the case of the young Yemeni Salih Musa Ahmad al-Bidani, when he was sentenced to death, explaining that the trial was unfair. Our organization also participated in organizing a number of protests demanding the release of the detained Yemenis in Iraq in coordination with the National Commission for Defending Rights and Freedoms, HOOD. The two organizations also communicated about these cases with the Yemeni authorities, in particular the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Human Rights, both of whom began their positive activism in this matter. The Alkarama and HOOD submitted several appeals to the Yemeni and Iraqi governments to end the suffering of the detainees and reconsider the unfair judgments issued against them based on unfair trials.