A/HRC/42/CRP.1 access to legal counsel nor to their families during their detention period. They were additionally not informed of the grounds for their detention. 817. The Group of Experts documented another case where two Baha’i men were arrested and held for three days in March 2015 without charges. When one of them asked about the grounds of his arrest, he was reportedly told: “Because you are Baha’i”.1313 818. On 17 April 2017, the criminal prosecution authority of Sana’a issued an order to arrest 25 individuals, a list that reportedly included more than 20 Baha’is. The individuals were summoned by the prosecutor by phone in some cases,1314 while others heard of the list and that their names were on it and went into hiding.1315 Reportedly, five were arrested while the others have been in hiding since. The list included one girl under the age of 18.1316 The Group of Experts received reports, and examined official documentation and United Nations statements indicating that the accusations brought against a Baha’i man, Jawahir Hamid Kamal Bin Haydara, who has been held in detention since 2013, and who was sentenced to death in 2018, are centred around his beliefs.1317 819. On the basis of Bin Haydara’s case and others, the Group of Experts hold serious concerns about the targeting of Baha’is on the basis of their faith. In a televised speech dating from March 2018, Abdelmalik al-Houthi1318 “denounced” a number of “faiths” as waging a war against Islam, and stated that they constituted an imminent and “violent threat” to Yemeni society and Islam, a threat that he alleged was born during the conflict. The leader of the Houthis focused in his speech on the Baha’i faith, which he qualified as a newly arrived and “satanical emissary” to Yemen, that was bred and cared for by Israel to combat Islam. In the same speech he also attacked other religious or belief groups, including the Ahmadiya, secularism and Christianity. While the speech by al-Houthi was not aimed at specific members of the various religious communities he cited, and while he referred to the Baha’i faith rather than its followers, his words raise serious concerns in light of the present conflict where sectarian sentiments have been on the rise. His position of religious and political leadership within the movement lends further gravity to his statements. The fact that prior to his speech, Baha’is had been already arbitrarily detained by the Houthis in Sana’a, gives more weight to his speech and its potential impact on Baha’i individuals, whose names were by then publicly available. 1319 The issuance of an arrest warrant against the 20 Baha’is and the arrests documented by the Group of Experts are considered indicative of a pattern of targeting Baha’is by the de facto authorities. 820. In a written reply to questions raised by the Group of Experts on members of the Baha’i community,1320 the de facto authorities replied that it had charges including exchanging information with a foreign state, labelled in the letter as “The Zionist entity”, against 20 members of the Baha’i faith. According to the de facto authorities’ response, these charges fall under Law 12 (1994) concerning Crimes and Penalties as an external state security crime that might endanger or harm the state and are punishable by article 125 of the same Law. The Group of Experts notes that article 125 carries the death sentence.1321 The de facto authorities further stated that the accused are presently undergoing a public trial, that their right to defence was respected, and that most of them had been released, with the exception of three individuals, in accordance with court decisions. The de facto authorities emphasized that charges held against these individuals were unrelated to their 1313 Confidential Sources on File. Confidential Sources on File. 1315 Confidential Sources on File. 1316 Confidential Sources on File. 1317 For more on this case, see Chapter Life in Sana’a and other areas under control of the de facto authorities, section on arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearances, torture and other illtreatment, and violations of fundamental freedoms in Sana’a. 1318 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioy_G-rlMX4. 1319 Confidential Sources on File. 1320 Letter dated 29 July 2019. 1321 Republican Decree for Law No 12 for the Year 1994 Concerning Crimes and Penalties, available at http://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/83557/92354/F1549605860/YEM83557.pdf. 1314 196