Yemen prisoner swap to start on Thursday as peace hopes rise

DUBAI: A prisoner exchange involving hundreds of detainees from Yemen´s brutal civil war will start on Thursday, a Yemeni government official said, against a backdrop of rising hopes for peace.

Nearly 900 prisoners, most of whom were fighting with Huthi rebels, will be flown between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, which leads the military coalition fighting on behalf of the ousted government, the official said on Tuesday.

The Arabian Peninsula´s poorest country has been at war since the Saudi-led intervention began in March 2015, months after the Iran-backed Huthis seized the capital Sanaa. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, through direct and indirect causes, and Yemen is suffering one of the world´s worst humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations.

The prisoner exchange, the biggest since October 2020, will last three days and involve multiple cities in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, said Majid Fadael, the official spokesman for the government delegation negotiating the exchange.

The Huthis will release 181 prisoners, including Saudis and Sudanese, in exchange for 706 detainees held by government forces, according to an agreement reached last month in Switzerland. “All arrangements have been completed... to implement the agreed-upon exchange process,” Fadael tweeted.

“The first day of the exchange process will be through reciprocal flights of the Red Cross between Aden-Sanaa and Sanaa-Aden,” he added. The exchange agreement was struck days after the landmark announcement that heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Iran, long at odds in the turbulent Gulf region, would seek to restore diplomatic ties after a hiatus of seven years.