Reprieve, a UK-based NGO which works range from providing legal services, to investigating human rights violations and campaigning against unlawful detention as well as arrest, has called earlier this week on the Yemeni government to make the location of US national Sharif Mobley known.
A US citizen born in New Jersey in 1984, Mobley travelled to Yemen in 2008 with his wife and young daughter. In view of Yemen’s deteriorating situation Mobley decided in late 2009 to return to the US where he felt his family will be safe. When Mobley went to the US embassy to have his family papers processed his troubles began.
According to Reprieve’s own account, “On the morning of January 26th 2010, two white vans pulled up to a small shop on Souq al-Maqaleh Street in Sana’a, Yemen – the neighbourhood where the Mobley family lived. Sharif, who had been grocery shopping, was in front of the shop, taking a break for tea. Eight armed men clad in black and balaclavas poured out of the vans. Without identifying themselves or showing a warrant, they grabbed Sharif. Fearing he was being kidnapped, Sharif managed to escape their grasp, but made it just steps before they shot him twice in the leg. The men then threw Sharif, crying out for his wife, into one of the vans, and sped away.”
As Reprieve has claimed Mobley had been taken by Yemen Intelligence Services after US officials allegedly identified him as a potential national security threat to undergo interrogation.
Since his arrest in 2010 Mobley has been held prisoner by the Yemeni government.
Mobley which faces now murder charges; he during an fatally injured a guard when he attempted to escape from Al Jumhori hospital where he was being treated for severe injuries, has been allegedly held incommunicado in an undisclosed location.
His lawyer Cori Crider, who works with Reprieve said she has no idea where her client has been taken, or if he is still alive. While Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesman at the Yemeni embassy in the US, has strongly denied that Mobley “was disappeared”, Reprieve said to be dubious.
Cory Crider commented to the press, “As of last night neither we nor the US Embassy in Yemen knew where he was. Both we and they were told by Sanaa-based officials that he had been moved.” Following such statement, al-Basha reacted by indicating that according to his knowledge Mobley was being held at Sana’a Central Prison, where he had been transferred following his attempted escape.
But since Reprieve could neither make contact with Mobley nor verified visually that he was indeed where the authorities have said he should be, the organization is continuing its campaign.
Crider warned, “I will believe my client is safe and well when one of my staff, or Khaled al-Ansi (his Yemeni lawyer) is able to see him and talk to him about where in the heck he has been.”
As both the Yemen and the US have chosen not to comment on the matter, refusing to engage with Reprieve in the media, the organization is adamant something untoward is at play.
Crider has implied that because Mobley had in his possession enough evidences to secure his release by proving that he had been unlawfully arrested and subsequently detained, notwithstanding the ill-treatment he is believed to have suffered, powers might have decided to move a liability away from the reach if the judicial. She said, ““It is unfortunate that Mr Mobley disappeared just as a court was about to hear evidence of his violent [kidnapping] in a misguided joint Yemeni-US security operation.”
In any case Crider does not believe that US officials are unable to locate Mobley. “I said I found it surprising that a government that coordinates so closely on drone attacks and other security matters would not be told the location of one of its own citizen … They simply said they were sending a dipnote,” stressed Crider.