In the evening, a group of masked men — escorted by several armed women wearing Abayas with their hands and eyes covered — shuffle into an isolated building for female inmates at the Central Prison in Houthi-held Sanaa.

Shortly after they enter the building, the prison’s inmates and workers in the neighboring wards hear the screams of women and men shouting throughout the night.

Fawzia Ahmed was once head of the women’s section in the Central Prison, before later being detained by the rebels before fleeing Yemen. Divorced from a man who joined the Houthis and a mother of two children, Fawzia first hand saw Houthis’ “horrific” abuses of female prisoners inside the large prison.

“I could hear the screams of the prisoners, the screams of the children. Everything that happens there; cursing, rape and everything,” she told Arab News from Cairo, where she is currently living after fleeing Yemen.

The only thing she knows about those men and women is that they are Houthi investigators accompanied by notorious Houthi policewomen known as Zaynabiat, harshly questioning female inmates inside the Central Prison in Sanaa.

“We do not know who sent them and we were not allowed to ask about their identity,” she said. Fawzia had been working inside the women’s section of the jail for almost two decades before fleeing the capital in late 2019.

The rebels completely seized control of the Central Prison in late 2017, soon after they killed the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Saleh, who ruled Yemen for three decades before leaving office in 2011 following Arab Spring-inspired protests, was killed after leading a brief military uprising against the Houthis, his former allies.

“The Houthis purged workers, doctors, nurses and guards and deployed their Zaynabiat inside the prison,” she said.

At the same time, the rebels turned a building that hosted classes for literacy, computering, nursery, handicraft and sewing into a new prison. They started transporting women from the other secret prisons across Sanaa into the new jail.

They gave firm instructions to jailors not to visit the prison or leak information about what happens behind closed doors.

“They removed computers and other equipment, combined rooms and galvanized doors and windows with steel. The first group of women was transferred to the prison a month after the death of Ali Abdullah Saleh,” she said.

At the same time, the rebels formulated a new program for all prisoners and jailors. They get up at 2 a.m., later listening to lectures of the movement’s leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi and his interpretation of Qur’an and reading his biography.

“They canceled all of the other activities. He (Abdul Malik) interprets the Qur’an and they tell us they came to spread the true Islam,” she said, adding that the women’s section exceeded its capacity, from 50 prisoners in early 2018 to more than 400 after the Houthis intensified their crackdown on women and supporters of the former president.

“We were shouting at them that the prison was full. Those women were abducted from restaurants, parks, or streets for wearing ‘daring’ outfits, mixing with males or walking without male companions. Two women were arrested for having pictures of the former president in their mobiles.”

The Houthis blocked the country’s Yemeni Penal Code by allowing their interrogators to question prisoners at any time — even at midnight — subjecting them to any form of physical and mental torture to extract confessions and allowing guards to enter rooms with their weapons and electric stun sticks.

Fawzia said most abhorred and fearful Houthi figures are Mohammed Al-Makhethi, the director of the Central Prison, and many other officials who have noms de guerre such as Abu Ammar, Abu Terab and Abu Raid.

“Al-Makhethi is the most provocative person you would ever meet. He visits the prison at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. and begins questioning prisoners alone in the room until the morning. He shouts at us and expels us from the room when we object to his presence.”

Fawzia said that shortly after the arrival of a new group of abducted women to the prison, their relatives will rush to prisons, police stations, Houthi officials and even the attorney general, frantically searching for information.

“The Houthis strongly deny they have ever heard or seen them. The attorney general tells families to bring him evidence that they are jailed,” she said. The Houthis take children of jailed women to the battlefields to fight government forces and keep the younger children with their incarcerated mothers until they grow up.

One day, Fawzia broke the rules and informed a mother of an abducted woman that her daughter was inside the Central Prison. When the Houthis learnt that she shared secret information about a prisoner, they subjected her to harsh interrogations and jailed her for three months.