Will Baha'is be released from Yemeni prisons as ordered?

Naseh Shaker

Apr 1, 2020

Members of the Baha'i faith hold flowers as they demonstrate outside a state security court during a hearing in the case of a fellow Baha'i man charged with seeking to establish a base for the community in Yemen, in the country's capital Sanaa April 3, 2016. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah - GF10000369865 — Members of the Baha'i faith hold flowers as they demonstrate outside a state security court during a hearing in the case of a fellow Baha'i man charged with seeking to establish a base for the community in Yemen, Sanaa, April 3, 2016. — REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

SANAA, Yemen — In a surprise move, the leadership of the Houthi movement ordered the release of all detained members of the Baha'i religious minority in Yemen on March 25 and pardoned their leader, Hamed bin Haydara, who had been sentenced to death.

“We order the release of all Baha'i prisoners and announce the pardon and release of Hamed bin Haydara,” Mehdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi-led Supreme Political Council (SPC), said in a televised speech marking the fifth anniversary of the Yemeni war that broke out March 26, 2015. “The concerned authorities should put all that into effect.”