Three popular YouTubers in Yemen appeared in a Houthi rebel-controlled court in Sanaa on Wednesday (January 11th) on charges
of "spreading false information
" and "
inciting chaos
", according to the indictment obtained by AFP.
Ahmed Hajar, Moustapha al-Mawmari and Ahmad Elaw, who together have several million social media followers, were arrested in December after the publication of videos criticizing corruption and the deterioration of living conditions in the capital, the hands of the rebels for more than eight years.
Accused of spreading false information
Close to Iran, the Houthis, who are fighting government forces backed by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, took Sanaa in 2014, along with large swaths of Yemen.
The three Youtubers, as well as a director who helped one of them, are on trial for having "
spread false information
" and "
inciting people to chaos and to take to the streets (...) serving the interests aggression against Yemen
,” according to the indictment obtained by AFP.
The prosecution requested the "
severest sentences provided by law
", without specifying their length, against the defendants who appeared on Wednesday for the first time in court.
“Everyone complains about Ansarallah”
The first to be arrested, Ahmad Hajar, 43, who has more than 245,000 subscribers on his Youtube channel, accused the rebels in a video of having "
robbed and looted the Yemeni people
".
"
All Yemenis say it (...) everyone complains about Ansarallah
", the other name given to the Houthi rebels, he said.
A few days later, Moustapha al-Mawmari, a 29-year-old YouTuber with more than 2 million subscribers, and Ahmad Elaw, a 32-year-old sports commentator with 800,000 subscribers, were arrested in turn.
One of Ahmad Hajar's relatives told AFP that he was "
in a terrible state
", suffering from a chronic illness.
Read alsoUS Navy seizes weapons shipment en route from Iran to Yemen
A short-lived truce
The war in Yemen has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives since 2015 and plunged the poorest on the Arabian Peninsula into one of the world's worst humanitarian tragedies.
A UN-brokered truce in April gave people respite for six months, but when it expired the two sides failed to reach an agreement to extend it.
