(22 Jun 2017) For the better part of six months, this man alleges his hands were bound, and he was blindfolded.
Wrists tied behind his back or in front of him, he was not free to even scratch his nose.
He was only free a few minutes a day to use the bathroom, and even that was restricted to once a day.
Sometimes, inmates weren't even allowed that, and they were forced to relieve themselves in bottles or a corner.
He said he was bound even when he slept, right next to a cellmate.
His only charge is that a distant relative was connected to al-Qaida.
"I stayed there for around 177 days, without proper investigation. They questioned me after 10 days of detention and that was it. But during those 177 days there were beatings, insults, humiliation and as for practicing torture, there is a man they call 'the Doctor,' an Emirati, who's a specialist in torture alone", he says.
The man has chosen to conceal his identity for fear of being detained again.
Hundreds of men swept up in the hunt for al-Qaida militants have disappeared into a secret network of prisons in southern Yemen where allegations of abuse and torture are rife.
Some are handed to Americans for interrogation in the prison or taken out of the country altogether, The Associated Press has found.
The Pentagon acknowledged to the AP that U.S. forces have been involved in interrogations of detainees but denied any participation in human rights abuses.
The hidden system of at least 18 prisons is run by the United Arab Emirates and Yemeni forces trained and funded by the Gulf country, a close U.S. intelligence partner, the AP has found.
For more than a year, detainees have been moved around from prison to prison and even out of the country to an Emirati base across the Red Sea in Eritrea.
In a statement to the AP, the UAE's government denied the allegations, saying "there are no secret detention centres and no torture of prisoners is done during interrogations."
But at one main detention complex at the airport of the southern city of Mukalla, former inmates described being crammed into shipping containers smeared with diarrhea and blindfolded for weeks on end.
They claimed they were beaten, rotated on a spit like a roast and sexually assaulted, among other abuse.
Only yards away in other buildings, U.S. forces are there for operations against the extremist group known as al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.
It's a situation to which this man, who lost 30 kilograms during his imprisonment, doesn't want to return.
He says he would rather "die and go to hell" than go back.
In the course of weeks of investigation, AP interviewed 10 former prisoners, as well as a dozen officials in the Yemeni government, military and security services and nearly 20 relatives of detainees.
The United Arab Emirates has turned Yemen's southern coast into its protectorate, the AP found.
The UAE is part of a Saudi-led coalition meant to save Yemen's government from Shiite rebels known as Houthis in a 2-year-old civil war, while at the same time helping the U.S. to fight al-Qaida's branch, one of the most dangerous in the world.
But the UAE has also set up an extensive security apparatus, creating its own Yemeni militias and running military bases.
The result has undermined the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, which complains it has no control over Emirati-backed fighters or the prisons.
A renovated cell, several meters by several meters across, was freshly painted and aired by ceiling fans.
Other detention centres are near Gold Mohur bay, one of the most marvelous sites in Aden.
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