'The screaming is beyond imagination': Detainees describe sexual abuse at UAE-controlled prisons in Yemen

Sexual abuse of Yemenis imprisoned in UAE-controlled jails is rampant, according to an Associated Press report. 

Emirati prison guards use sexual abuse to brutalise the detainees and extract "confessions," prisoners and witnesses have told AP.

Drawings of the abuses they faced, smuggled from the Beir Ahmed prison in the southern city of Aden, provide a glimpse of the conditions inside.

The drawings - made on plastic plates - show a man hanging naked from chains while he is being subjected to electric shocks, another inmate on the floor surrounded by snarling dogs as several people kick him, and graphic depictions of anal rape.

"The worst thing about it is that I wish for death every day and I can't find it," the artist said, summing up nearly two years in detention that started last year after he spoke against the Emiratis in public.

Witnesses said Yemeni guards working under the direction of Emirati officers use various methods of sexual torture and humiliation. They rape detainees while filming the assaults. They subject prisoners' genitals to electric shocks or hang rocks from their testicles. They sexually violate others with wooden and steel poles.

The men screamed and wept. Those who resisted were threatened by barking dogs and beaten until they bled

"They strip you naked, then tie your hands to a steel pole from the right and the left so you are spread open in front of them. Then sodomizing starts," said one 46-year-old man who has been in detention for more than two years and who.

"The men screamed and wept. Those who resisted were threatened by barking dogs and beaten until they bled," AP reported, after interviewing seven witnesses to the mass abuse.

The UAE, an ally of the US, is part of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting against the Houthis rebels in Yemen to restore the government to power.

After forcing the Houthis out of southern Yemen, the UAE has taken the lead.

The UAE's secret prisons and widespread torture were exposed by an AP investigation last June. AP has since identified at least five prisons where security forces use sexual torture to brutalise and break inmates.

One is at the Buriqa base in Aden - the headquarters for the Emirati forces and where American officers were seen along with Colombian mercenaries, according to two prisoners and two security officials. Inside, prisoners said that American personnel in uniform weren't directly involved but were aware of the torture - either by hearing the screams or seeing the marks.

"Americans use Emiratis as gloves to do their dirty work," said one senior security official at the Riyan prison in Mukalla.

Two other security officials said that mercenaries including Americans are present at all the Emirati military camps and sites, including the prisons. Their mission is mainly to guard.

The security official said that sometimes the screaming from the beatings is so intense that he can feel his cell shake.

"It's beyond imagination," he said.

US officials have acknowledged that American forces receive intelligence from its UAE ally and have participated in interrogations in Yemen. But despite AP's investigation, a Pentagon spokesman denied seeing evidence of detainee abuse there and that he could not comment on intelligence sharing with partners.

"Department of Defense personnel are expected to adhere to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct," Marine Maj. Rankine-Galloway said.

UAE officials did not respond to requests for comment.