Yemen’s Houthi rebels this weekend freed a young model who sometimes appeared unveiled and who had been imprisoned for almost five years for violations of local morality that she denied, her lawyer and a security source told AFP on Sunday.
Intissar al-Hammadi, who posed for local fashion designers, often with her hair uncovered, and shared her photos with her thousands of followers on Instagram and Facebook, was arrested in 2021 while going with a friend to a photo shoot.
The two women were sentenced the following year by a local court to five years in prison for “fornication”, “prostitution” and “drug use”, unfounded accusations and attacks on women’s freedoms, according to their lawyer and NGO.
“Intissar al Hammadi was released last night and is now at home,” her lawyer, Me Khaled al Kamal, told AFP on Sunday. “She suffered many ailments and her condition worsened due to the injustices she suffered,” he added.
A few months after her arrest, Amnesty International called for the model’s immediate release, stating that she had been “mistreated”, “forced to admit to several crimes” and punished for opposing “deeply patriarchal” social norms.
Born to an Ethiopian mother and a Yemeni father, Intissar al-Hammadi had published dozens of photographs on the Internet, dressed in a traditional dress, jeans or leather jacket, with or without an Islamic veil, and had also appeared in two local television series, according to the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Yemen was already considered one of the toughest countries for women, but the situation has deteriorated further in Houthi-controlled areas since the country fell into civil war in 2014.
Source: BFM TV
