20 Feb 2022; MEMO: A woman has kidnapped her former husband in Yemen earlier this month, in a rare incident of its kind in the war-torn country, according to local reports.
The man, identified as Mubarak Sultan was seized by his ex-wife Taghreed Al-Sharabi with the help of her brothers on 7 February in the south-western province of Taiz.
Gulf News reported that the chief of the province's Criminal Search Department released a statement last week, ordering the head of the local police station to secure the man's release and arrest those responsible for his abduction. The victim's family have so far been unable to secure his release through local mediators.
It has been alleged that the woman arranged Sultan's kidnapping after he remarried. He was seized while walking on a street and taken to an unknown place.
However, news portal Aden Al-Ghad reported that the accused, in a statement insisted she did not carry out the kidnapping, instead blaming the security services in Taiz of inaction and her former husband's relatives of fabricating the kidnapping. She also described her ex-husband as abusive and had demanded her rights as a divorced woman which went ignored.
Disappearances and abductions are frequent in Yemen and have been committed by various parties in the country's conflict. Last week, five UN workers were kidnapped by suspected Al-Qaeda militants in the southern province of Abyann, four of them are thought to be Yemeni nationals.
