Yemen: Mansur Rajih: Prisoner of conscience under sentence of death

This paper reports AI’s concern that Mansur Rajih, a writer and poet and member of the political opposition in the former Yemen Arabic Republic, has been sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. On 8 July 1983, 8 days after his release from a previous spell of detention without trial, Mansur Rajih was arrested by the National Security Police and taken to an interrogation centre in the centre of Ta’iz where he was held for 9 months and allegedly interrogated under torture. He was tried in March 1984 on charges of murder, which AI believes were trumped up; the trial itself fell short of international standards for fair trials. Rajih Mansur’s father and uncle were tried with him; they each received 15-year sentences for being accessories to murder.

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