The head of a prominent Yemeni teachers’ union has been transferred from prison to hospital in Sanaa. Yemeni government officials and rights groups blame Abu Zaid Al-Kumaim’s Houthi captors for his deteriorating health, claiming they tortured him and refused to give him access to necessary medication.

Al-Kumaim, the head of the Teachers’ Club, has been moved from a Houthi-held jail and is currently in a “complete” coma in Al-Kuwait hospital.

Al-Kumaim was kidnapped by the Houthis in October for demanding that the Houthis pay thousands of teachers who had not received their salary for eight years, as well as urging instructors to boycott school until their wages had been paid.

The Geneva-based SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties reported on Friday that Al-Kumaim’s condition had significantly deteriorated over the past five days, leaving him in a coma.

A relative of his who spoke to the organization said that Al-Kumaim told his family before falling into the coma that the Houthis were serious about killing him and fabricating charges against him for demanding public salaries.

“We demand that the Houthi group immediately and unconditionally free Al-Kumaim and the union leaders, and we emphasize that the organization’s adherence to legal standards is contradicted by such instances,” SAM said in a statement. 

Public pressure on the Houthis to pay public employees has been growing for more than a year now, as reports show that the Houthis have accrued billions of Yemeni riyals in revenue from Hodeidah ports as the Yemeni government allowed dozens of fuel and goods ships to dock there under a UN-brokered truce.

Thousands of teachers have gone on strike in Yemen in recent months to pressure the Houthis to pay their wages. The Houthis responded by kidnapping union leaders and firing those who went on strike. 

News of Al-Kumaim’s deteriorating health has generated anger and demands for his release in Yemen. Rights advocates fear that Al-Kumaim may meet the same fate as scores of captives who have died as a result of abuse and neglect in Houthi detention facilities recently.

Ahmed Nagi Al-Nabhani, a Sanaa-based activist, said Al-Kumaim suffers from diabetes and that his Houthi captors had “harshly” mistreated him and denied him medication.

He claimed the Houthis refused to release Al-Kumaim despite receiving an order to do so from the militia’s attorney general.

“Have you discovered any reason in all man-made and divine rules for ignoring health treatment for a diabetic citizen in prison?” Al-Nabhani asked in a Facebook post. 

Information Minister Muammar Al-Eryani has said that Houthi captors at the prison where Al-Kumaim was being held had subjected him to psychological and physical abuse, denied him sleep and health care, and refused to give him medicine, causing him to fall into a coma.

“This heinous crime is not the first and will not be the last,” the minister said on social-media platform X.