Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al-Helmani, a 71-year-old educator from Yemen’s Dhamar Governorate, died in February 2026 from injuries suffered when unjustly imprisoned by the Houthis.
In November 2025, a female teacher, Dr. Ashwaq Suleiman Al-Shumairi, was kidnapped by a Houthi women’s militia in Sanaa.
These are not isolated incidents.
In a campaign of terror against Yemeni citizens, the Houthis have focused on oppressing academics to ensure conformity to the group’s radical Iranian-influenced ideology.
University academics and faculties have been forced to attend both ideological and military training sessions and pledge loyalty to the Houthis, according to Fares al Hemyari, a journalist specializing in Yemen.
Teachers who resist face kidnapping, torture and imprisonment. Yemeni human rights activist Riyad Al-Duba’i says that the Houthis rely on what he called a war economy to monetize political repression, meaning that families of prisoners must pay bribes to be allowed to visit relatives behind bars.
Al-Helmani was abducted in October 2025 and subjected to torture that left him partially blind and paralyzed. He died soon after his release.
Al-Shumairi disappeared after she traveled from Taiz to visit her daughter in the Houthi-controlled city of Sanaa. She is not the only prominent woman kidnapped by the terrorist group. Human rights groups also have tracked other abducted women, including Intisar Al-Hammadi, Fatima Al-Aruli and Asmaa Al-Umaisi.
For 11 years, the Houthis have committed crimes against the Yemeni people: shelling residential areas, kidnapping and torturing opponents, planting landmines, blocking food shipments, arming children, and harassing employees of Yemeni and foreign humanitarian organizations.
The World Food Programme (WFP) shut down operations in northern Yemen because of harassment and arbitrary detainment of employees. About 365 of the remaining WFP employees in northern Yemen planned to cease working there by the end of March 2026, according to U.N. officials.
Sources: Al Hadath, globalissues.org, Asharq Al-Awsat, fdd.org