A father was publicly executed in Yemen after being found guilty of murdering his three daughters.
Ali Abdullah al-Noami, 40, left his three daughters Rahaf, 7, Raghad, 12, and Malak, 14, to drown in a water tank after a row with his wife.
Ali Abdullah al-Noami was sentenced to death by public shooting.
Along with two other convicted child-killers – Abdullah Ali al-Mukahali, 38, and Mohammed Abdullah Arman, 33 – the 40-year-old was led out into Tahrir Square in the centre of Yemen’s constitutional capital Sana’a and made to kneel on a red carpet.
An executioner wielding a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle then shot all three men in the back in full view of a large crowd of spectators, some of whom were filming the executions on their mobile phones and video cameras.
Current laws in Yemen allow the death penalty for a wide range of crimes including murder, kidnapping, rape, adultery, homosexuality, and a number of religious offences.
After the three men were shot, a medic quickly checked each body to ensure that they were all dead.
All three bodies were wrapped in white body bags, which soldiers in camouflage uniforms then carried away.
It was the first public execution in the city since August 2018, when three men convicted of raping and killing a child were shot, and then had their bodies displayed hanging from a crane.
Women in Yemen have historically been placed at a disadvantage due to their sex, with a highly patriarchal society.
Although the government of Yemen has made efforts that will improve the rights of women in Yemen (including the formation of a Women’s Development Strategy and a Women Health Development Strategy), many cultural and religious norms, along with poor enforcement of this legislation from the Yemeni government, have prevented Yemeni women from having equal rights to men.
This, combined with illiteracy and economic issues has led women to continuously be deprived of their rights as citizens of Yemen.
While Article 40 and 41 of the 1990 unification constitution of Yemen stipulates that all citizens are considered equal before the law and that “Every citizen has the right to participate in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the country”gender discrimination is prevalent in Yemen.
