UN says Houthis handed back control of its human rights office in Yemen

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have returned the United Nations Human Rights Office in Sanaa, which they had seized earlier this month, a UN spokesman says.

On August 3, the Iran-backed group sent a delegation to the UN Human Rights Office’s premises and forced staff to hand over the keys.

“The office was handed back today to our resident coordinator in Yemen,” says Stephane Dujarric, UN spokesman for the secretary-general.

According to the coordinator, “the office appears to be in its original state, but an inventory is currently underway,” Dujarric says.

UN rights chief Volker Turk, who announced the seizing of the office last week, called it “a serious attack on the ability of the UN to perform its mandate.”

The UN again calls for the release of 13 of its staff and dozens of NGO and embassy employees who have been held by the Houthis for more than two months. The Houthis claimed they arrested “an American-Israeli spy network” operating under the cover of humanitarian organizations — allegations emphatically rejected by the UN Human Rights Office.