Lawyers for an American missing from a jail in Yemen are asking the United Nations to intervene, even as Yemeni officials insist he has not been disappeared.
Sharif Mobley has not been seen by his lawyers since 27 February. Attorneys for Mobley, who has been detained since 2010 and is awaiting trial on murder charges, consider him to be “disappeared” from the central prison in the capital city of Sana’a.
His wife, Nzinga Islam, will release an open letter to President Barack Obama urging him to “use your great power for good, and help this citizen who has been treated so unfairly.”
Reprieve, the UK-based human rights group representing Mobley, wrote on 30 April to the United Nations working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances requesting “urgent action” in the case.
“Mr Mobley was disappeared on the eve of a hearing in which his defense team was due to introduce extensive evidence about the United States’ role in his original secret detention. His current imprisonment is unlawful, raises serious ill‐treatment concerns, and creates real doubt that he will receive a fair trial in Yemen,” Reprieve strategic director Cori Crider wrote in the letter seeking a UN inquiry.
Mobley, an American citizen studying in Yemen with his family, was shot and detained weeks after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a civilian airliner in December 2009, allegedly with the assistance of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen-turned al-Qaeda propagandist who has since been killed. US officials reportedly believed Mobley, who friends described as increasingly radical, could lead them to al-Awlaki, and FBI agents questioned Mobley at his hospital bed. The US killed al-Awlaki in a drone strike in 2011.
Yemen, whose security services are heavily supported by Washington, later dropped terrorism charges against Mobley, but charged him with murder after a guard was killed during an alleged attempt by Mobley to escape from the hospital.
Reprieve told the UN that repeated efforts at visiting Yemeni prisons and communicating with Yemeni authorities and the US Embassy in Sanaa were unsuccessful in yielding any evidence of Mobley’s whereabouts.
A Yemeni official told the Guardian that Mobley is still in the Sana'a central prison and advised his attorneys to coordinate visits with the embassy.
“I have been repeatedly in contact with the US Embassy about Sharif Mobley,” said Crider. “I can’t get the facts about where my client is.”
The State Department would not comment on Mobley’s case, citing “privacy considerations,” but an official said consular officials “strive to assist US citizens detained abroad whenever possible,” a reiteration of the same statement given to the Guardian for an 10 April story.
Mobley’s wife Islam will ask Obama in her forthcoming open letter: “President Obama, your government and the Yemeni government must know where my husband is being held. Can you imagine Michelle being taken from you and no one telling you where she is? Would you go out of your mind with worry?”
