Sanaa.. A Houthi court acquits Al-Mutawakkil in the “lethal injection” case

On Sunday, September 24, 2023, a Houthi court acquitted the Houthi leader appointed to the position of Minister of Public Health and Population in the unrecognized government, Houthi leader Taha Al-Mutawakkil, of responsibility for the killing and wounding of 21 Yemeni children in the case of the fatal dose for cancer patients in Kuwait Hospital, last year.

The court contented itself with convicting the Supreme Pharmaceutical Authority on charges of providing assistance to the convicts (Faisal Muhammad Muhammad Awad, Fahd Abu Bakr Muhammad Salem, and Abdullah Rashid Ali Al-Ariqi), who were punished with one-year suspended imprisonment.

The ruling stipulated that the Medicines Authority be punished by “paying a fine of 10 million Yemeni riyals to the Children’s Leukemia Unit at Kuwait University Hospital, as well as obliging it to pay 10 million Yemeni riyals to receive the blood of a deceased child to each guardian, and to pay five million Yemeni riyals to each infected child, in compensation for the damages.” 

The West Amanah Court obligated the convicts to “pay an amount of 20 million riyals, which will be given to the guardians of injured children from the first to the tenth, and pay an amount of 11 million riyals, which will be given to the guardians of the blood of the victims, in exchange for fines and losses from litigation.”

The ruling implicitly acknowledged the responsibility of the Ministry of Health and its affiliated institutions, as the court approved “obliging the Ministry of Public Health and Population, the Supreme Authority for Medicines, the health offices in the governorates, and the Anti-Smuggling Unit in all ports of the Republic of Yemen, to bear their legal responsibilities, and to apply and implement legal legislation related to health and control of the pharmaceutical market.” “And to ensure the extent to which medical and pharmaceutical facilities comply with legal and health requirements or not.”

In an indication of the negligence and negligence of the officials of the Ministry of Public Health and Population in Sana’a, the court approved “obligating the Minister of Health and the National Center for the Treatment of Cancer Tumors to provide medical services for the treatment of tumors, develop the scientific and practical capabilities and competencies of the workers, and qualify them in the field of oncology treatment.”

The Yemeni Organization for Combating Human Trafficking said, after the crime occurred in September last year, that the Ministry of Public Health and Population affiliated with the Houthi militia dispensed an expired dose of treatment to children with cancer in Kuwait Hospital, which led to the poisoning and death of dozens of children.

Sources working in the health sector revealed to Newsyemen that pharmaceutical items classified as drugs had entered Sanaa and were smuggled from Kenya to Mogadishu and from Mogadishu to Yemen, through smugglers and those influential within the ranks of the group.

It indicated the involvement of leaders within the ranks of Iran's militia, in facilitating the entry of smuggled medicines into Yemen within days, in exchange for obstructing and delaying the agents' medicines for more than 3 months to transport them from Aden to Sana'a.

المصدر: نيوزيمن