The BBC has seen the secret prisons run by the UAE

The BBC has been granted access to detention facilities at former United Arab Emirates military bases in Yemen, confirming long-standing allegations of a network of secret prisons run by the UAE and its allied forces in Yemen’s decade-long civil war.

A former prisoner told the BBC that he was beaten and sexually abused at one of the sites.

We saw cells at two bases in the south of the country, including shipping containers with names – apparently prisoners – and dates scrawled on the sides.

The UAE did not respond to our request for comment, but has previously denied similar allegations.

Until recently, the Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia, was allied with the UAE against the Houthi rebel movement that controls northwest Yemen.

But the alliance between Yemen’s two Gulf state partners has broken. UAE forces withdrew from Yemen in early January and Yemeni government forces and groups allied to them have recaptured large swathes of the south from UAE-backed separatists.

This included the port of Mukalla, where we landed on a Saudi military plane and were taken to visit the former UAE military bases in the Al-Dhaba Oil Export Area.

It has been nearly impossible for international journalists to get visas to report from Yemen in recent years, but the government invited journalists to see the two sites, accompanied by Yemen’s Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani.

What we are seeing is consistent with accounts we have gathered independently, in our previous reporting as well as interviews conducted in Yemen, separate from visiting the government-run site.

In one place, there were about 10 shipping containers, the inside of which was painted black, with little ventilation.

Messages on the walls appear to mark the dates the inmates said they were taken, or count the number of days they were held.

Many are dated December 2025.

At another military base, the BBC showed eight cells built from brick and cement, including several measuring about one meter square and two meters high, which Eryani said were used for solitary confinement.

Human rights groups have documented testimony describing such facilities for years.

Yemeni lawyer Huda al-Sarari collects accounts.

The BBC independently attended a meeting he organized, where about 70 people attended who said they were held in Mukalla, as well as the families of another 30 who they said had relatives still in detention.

Several former prisoners told us that each shipping container could hold up to 60 men at a time.

They said the prisoners were blindfolded, bound by the wrists and forced to sit upright at all times.

“There was nowhere to lie down,” one former prisoner told the BBC. “When someone collapses, someone else must hold him up.”

The man also told the BBC he was beaten for three days after his arrest, with interrogators demanding he confess to being a member of al-Qaeda.

“They told me if I don’t accept it, I’ll be sent to ‘Guantanamo’,” he said, referring to the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

“I didn’t even know what they meant in Guantanamo until they took me to their prison. Then I understood.”

He said he was held there for a year and a half, beaten daily and abused.

“They didn’t even feed us properly,” he said. “If you want the toilet, they take you once. Sometimes you’re so desperate you make it yourself.”

He says that his captors included Emirati soldiers as well as Yemeni fighters: “All kinds of torture – when we were interrogated it was the worst. They even sexually abused us and said they would bring the ‘doctor’.

“This so-called doctor is Emirati. He beat us and told the Yemeni soldiers to beat us too. I tried to kill myself many times to end it.”

The UAE is leading a campaign against terrorism in southern Yemen, but human rights groups say thousands of people have been detained in crackdowns on political activists and critics.

A mother told us that her son was detained as a teenager and has been in prison for nine years.

“My son is an athlete,” she said. “He just came back from competing abroad. That day he went to the gym and never came back.”

“I haven’t heard from him in seven months,” he said.

“Then they made me look at him for 10 minutes. I saw all the torture wounds.”

She alleged that at the Emirati-run prison base, her teenage son was electrocuted, doused with cold water and sexually abused several times.

She said she attended a hearing where her son’s accusers played a recording of an apparent confession.

“You could hear him being beaten in the background and told what to say,” he said. “My son is not a terrorist. You robbed him of the best years of his life.”

Over the past decade, human rights groups and media organizations – including the BBC and Associated Press – have documented allegations of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and torture in detention facilities run by the UAE and its allies.

Human Rights Watch said in 2017 that it gathered testimonies of detainees held without charge or judicial supervision in unofficial facilities, and subjected to beatings, electric shocks and other forms of ill-treatment.

The UAE denied these allegations when they were made.

The BBC sent detailed allegations to the UAE government about the detentions we visited and accounts of abuse, but received no response.

All sides have been accused of human rights violations in the civil war, which has sparked a devastating humanitarian crisis in the country.

Families of the detainees told the BBC they had repeatedly raised concerns with the Yemeni authorities.

They believe it is impossible for the UAE and its allies to run a detention network without the Yemeni government and its Saudi backers knowing.

The minister of information, Eryani, said: “We have not been able to access the locations under the control of the UAE so far.

“When we released them we discovered these prisons … many victims told us they existed but we didn’t believe it was true.”

His government’s decision to grant access to international media comes as the rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE grows.

Their long-strained relationship soured in December when UAE-backed southern separatists, the Southern Transition Council (STC), seized territory controlled by government forces in two western provinces.

Saudi Arabia launched a strike on the alleged shipment of weapons from the UAE to STC in Mukalla, and supported a request from Yemen’s presidential council for Emirati forces to leave the country immediately.

The UAE withdrew and within days government forces and their allies regained control of the western provinces as well as the entire south.

However, remaining separatists threaten the government’s position in some areas, including the southern port of Aden.

The UAE has denied that the shipment contained weapons as well as Saudi allegations that it is behind the new STC military campaign.

On 12 January 2026, the president of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, which oversees the government, Rashad al-Alimi, ordered the closure of all “illegal” prisons in the southern provinces previously controlled by the STC, demanding the immediate release of those “conducted outside the framework of the law”.

Eryani said some inmates were discovered inside the facilities, but did not provide numbers or further details.

Some relatives – including the athlete’s mother – told the BBC that the prisoners had been transferred to prisons now under government control.

Yemeni authorities say transferring prisoners to the formal justice system is complicated, while rights groups warn that arbitrary detention could continue under different controls.

“Terrorists are in the streets,” said the mother.

“Our children are not terrorists.”