Yemeni court in Hadhramaut Governorate, eastern Yemen, sentenced to death 4 people accused of kidnapping two aid workers from the "Doctors Without Borders" organization.

The Criminal Court of First Instance specializing in terrorism and state security cases in Hadhramaut Governorate convicted Muhammad Ali, Aghla Al-Harithi, Ali Ghaleb Al-Shaafah Al-Salhi, Abdul-Rahman Ali Amer Al-Salhi, Shihab Abdullah Ali Al-Salhi, for the kidnapping incident attributed to them, and ruled that they should be punished with death by execution by beating with a sword or by shooting until death.

The court also convicted the defendant, Muhammad Saleh Nasser Tarik, of using a forged document, and decided to punish him by limiting the period he spent in pretrial detention.

The court ruled that 5 other defendants in the same case were acquitted of the charges attributed to them in the indictment.

In March last year, the convicts intercepted a car carrying two foreign employees working for the international organization Doctors Without Borders, while they were passing on the road linking the Al-Abr and Al-Khasha’a regions, west of Hadramaut Governorate, eastern Yemen, and took them to an unknown destination.

Later that year, security forces were able to liberate them, 6 months after their kidnapping, following an extensive investigation operation, which led to the arrest of a number of members of the gang that carried out the kidnapping.