The Iran-backed Houthi militia today released Alwahdawi newspaper’s financial and administrative officer Haitham Aoun who had been abducted two weeks ago.

Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC) condemns yesterday’s abduction of the journalist Taiseer Assamiee when he was passing through a militia-controlled checkpoint in Dimnat Khadir area in Taiz province, and was taken to a jail affiliated to the militias of Houthis and ousted president Saleh.

Militias of Houthis and ousted president, Ali Saleh, Monday morning, abducted the colleague Taiseer Assamiee in Dimnat Khadir district located in southeast city of Taiz in central Yemen.

Yemen ranked fourth among the countries with the highest murder rates of journalists and media staff worldwide during the 2016 year.

The reality of journalists in Yemen oscillated between being killed, kidnapped, tortured and threatened during the year 2016, in light of the continued control of the militias of the Houthi group and ousted president Ali Saleh over the capital Sanaa and other provinces by force of arms.

The Sana’a-based association of abductees’ mothers on Thursday called for an international probe into the torture-to-death crimes in prisons of the Houthi militia and ousted president Ali Saleh.

The militias of Houthis and ousted president Ali Saleh have transferred sixteen kidnapped journalists including the colleague, Yusuf Ajlan, to the Political Security Prison in the militia-held capital, Sanaa, a human rights source said on Thursday.

Offices of three journalists at Yemen’s rebel-held official newspaper of Al-Thawra have been broken into by the acting deputy chairman of the board of directors at Al-Thawra media foundation, Osama Sari along with a number of armed escorts who ejected the thee employees from the offices and tampered with contents, according to Yemeni Journalists Syndicate (YJS).

The Houthi-controlled Yemen News Agency (SABA) has recently stopped salaries of five journalists and threatened them with removing from their jobs.

Yemeni Journalists Syndicate (YJS) on Saturday said the attorney general appointed by the Iran-backed Houthi militia fabricated “a deceptive and false report”, which claims that the journalists abducted in Houthi jails have not been tortured during their stay in political security-affiliated prisons.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins its affiliate, the Yemeni Journalists´ Syndicate (YJS), in mourning the death in mysterious circumstances of a Yemeni journalist on 20 December.

Yemeni Journalists Syndicate(YJS) said it received a press release from the colleagues Amin Mohammed Sharaf, Abdul Rahman Ahmed Abdo and Waheeb Al Nosary stating that the site administration of Sawtshouraonline published by the political party “Union of Popular Forces” fired them from jobs after ten years of working at the website and Al-Shoura newspaper.