|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After being jailed in Yemen for five years without accusation or trial, a Welshman has been released. Luke Symons, from Cardiff, was 25 years old when the Houthis, a rebel group fighting the Yemeni government in the civil war, kidnapped him in 2017.
His family has deemed the notion that he was detained as a suspected spy “ridiculous.”
“Our Omani and Saudi allies for their efforts in achieving his release,” UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.
“I am happy Luke Symons, who has been wrongfully jailed in Yemen without charge or trial since 2017 has been released,” Ms Truss said.
“He was allegedly abused, held in solitary detention, and denied family visits; he was taken to Muscat [in Oman], and will soon be reunited with his family in the United Kingdom.”
He was one of 14 people whose release Oman claimed to have aided. They’ve been detained in Sanaa, Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital.
They have now been taken to Muscat, the capital of Oman, in order to be flown back to their respective nations. In his late teens, Mr. Symons converted to Islam and took the name Jamal.
He took a pilgrimage to Mecca when he was 20 years old, then travelled to Egypt and subsequently Yemen, where he taught English and married.
When turmoil erupted in 2015, he and his wife Tagreed fled the country, but they were unable to return since she had misplaced her passport in the midst of the upheaval.
They returned to Yemen and had a child, but they continued to look for methods to flee the country’s horrific civil war, which has killed thousands of people.
He was caught as a suspected spy two years later while presenting his British passport to withdraw money to facilitate his family’s exit from Yemen.