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From musical segments and cultural programs to the screams and groans of victims
At the summit of Jabal Khanfar, overlooking the city of Ja’ar in Abyan Governorate, southern Yemen, the facilities once known as “Radio Al-Shaab”—which since the late 1970s broadcast classical songs and socio-cultural programs and worked to raise awareness on agriculture, irrigation, livestock, and issues related to women and children, among others—were transformed into an unofficial detention center. Today, nothing is heard there but the screams and groans of victims. Jabal Khanfar has thus become a witness to a long trajectory in which an old civilian facility was turned into a detention site where the gravest violations are committed, far from any accountability or oversight.
In May 2011, armed members of Ansar al-Sharia took control of the facilities of Abyan Radio and other government buildings on Jabal Khanfar, looted their contents, and converted them into a camp and a center for detention, torture, and killing. Although the site was recaptured in May 2012 by Yemeni government forces, it did not regain its civilian character; instead, it continued to function as an illegal detention site, with the essence of the violations unchanged.
Since 2016, the site has been used as a detention and interrogation center under the pretext of “counterterrorism,” operated by the Security Belt Forces affiliated with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), as a detention facility entirely outside any judicial or legal oversight.
Control over the Jabal Khanfar detention center has alternated among several parties; however, the horrific violations have remained the constant common denominator.
Three security gates separate the summit of Jabal Khanfar from the city, its surroundings, and the outside world: heavily fortified checkpoints, armored vehicles, armed soldiers, and operations rooms through which passage is prohibited. Ascending to the summit is not a routine movement from one place to another, but an entry into a bleak space where rights are violated with impunity.
Inside the old buildings that once housed a radio station, rooms have been converted into detention cells, and some into sites where torture is practiced. There are no official signs, no clear records, and no judicial supervision—only isolated detainees, searching families, and questions without answers.
At the unofficial Jabal Khanfar detention center, patterns of violations recur: physical and psychological torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and a complete denial of legal safeguards. In some cases, the fate of detainees is not known until months later; in others, it is never known at all. Bodies may be disappeared, but the pain extends to families and settles for a long time into the details of their daily lives.
Mwatana for Human Rights documented the detention of 21 victims at the unofficial “Jabal Khanfar” detention center, including 16 victims who were subjected to multiple forms of physical and psychological torture. The organization also documented eight cases of enforced disappearance for extended periods, with the fate of some victims remaining unknown as of the date of publication of this blog.
What is happening in Jabal Khanfar is not an isolated case; rather, it is part of a broader pattern of unofficial detention facilities that have proliferated across Yemen during the years of conflict, where violations are committed in the name of security and victims are left alone to confront closed systems that are not subject to any accountability.
Mwatana for Human Rights calls for the immediate closure of the unofficial “Jabal Khanfar” detention center; the cessation of all forms of detention outside the framework of the law; the subjection of all detention facilities to the authority of the judiciary and the Public Prosecution; the accountability of all those in charge of this center and those implicated in the violations committed therein; the disclosure of the fate of forcibly disappeared persons; redress and reparations for victims; and guarantees of non-recurrence of these violations.
