Eight months after the end of her prison sentence, Olfat Saeed, 21, exits the prison gates in a body bag, a casualty of the Houthi bombing of the Central Women’s Prison in the city of Taiz, Yemen, on 5 April 2020. The attack killed six women prisoners and two children, one of them born in prison and the other visiting his incarcerated mother.
Saeed had done her time. She died because she was one among dozens of Yemeni women prisoners who have been denied release from prison after serving their sentences. The reasons vary from request of their own families, driven by social pressure, to the absence of a male family member to whom they could be released, to other illegal policies implemented by prison authorities under the pretext of protecting these women from possible violence upon release.
Amina Ahmad, 22, was also an inmate in the Taiz Women’s Prison when the Houthis attacked it. She had also remained incarcerated after completing her prison sentence – in her case, for five months. More fortunately than Saeed, however, she survived the attack and today lives in a women’s shelter.
