The survivor Abdu Hasan Saghyer Aseybah recounts, “I found myself arrested and forcibly disappeared just one day after my father was detained, both of us plunged into enforced disappearance. I was transferred to Hodeida City, imprisoned first at the Officers’ Club and then at the Citadel Prison. Eventually, I was relocated to Sana’a’s Revolution Reserve Prison. My abduction lasted for seven months, a period during which my father remained concealed. Oblivious to my own arrest, my father struggled in the dark. Even when he managed to speak with my mother over the phone, she chose not to reveal my fate to him, driven by her concern that my ordeal would only deepen his anguish within those prison walls.
In a surreal twist of fate, one peculiar and astonishing night, an airstrike rattled the walls of the Criminal Investigation Prison – the very place my father was kept detained. By chance, the detainees of that prison were shuffled to different facilities. Remarkably, it was in this chaotic shuffle that my father ended up incarcerated alongside me in the same prison.
As my father’s name was transcribed into the prisoners’ roster, a soldier’s ears perked up at the sound. Taken aback, he exclaimed, “Are you Abdu Hasan Aseybah’s father?” To which my father responded, “Yes, how do you know him?’ The soldier’s reply was startling, “He has been confined here for eight months.” The news struck my father like lightning – an abrupt and shocking revelation.
I had no idea that my father and I shared the same prison cell. As dawn broke, I resumed my daily duties among fellow detainees, cooking and distributing food as was customary. Little did I know that I was about to cross the threshold of a room where my father awaited my arrival. The journalists detained alongside him had already briefed him. At that moment, an indescribable meeting took place – a heartfelt and tearful embrace, infused with its own unique details.”