British held in Yemen without charge for 5 years is released
A British man who was held captive in Yemen for five years without charge or trial has been released from jail.
In 2017, Luke Symons, 30, was arrested by Houthi rebels at a security checkpoint on suspicion of espionage.
On Sunday, foreign secretary, Liz Truss, confirmed that Symons would be reunited with his family. He thanked Omani and Saudi negotiators, as well as 13 other foreign nationals in Yemen.
Symons, from Cardiff, has a longstanding connection to the war-torn country and travelled there in 2012, where he met his wife, Tagreed, a Yemeni national.
The couple, who have a young son, tried to flee the country during the conflict but Symons was stopped at a checkpoint in which he was found with a British passport and accused of being a spy, a claim his family denies.
Amnesty International has long campaigned for his release and was told by his family that he had been beaten by his captors in an attempt to extract a confession and his arm had been broken.
The Briton was being held in solitary confinement in a prison in Sana a city, and told family members that conditions were affecting his physical and mental health.
Kevin Brennan, Labour MP for Cardiff West, tweeted that his constituent had finally been released.
He said: Thanks to all at the FCDO Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and most of all to Luke's family for their tireless campaigning. Brennan said Symons wife and son had left Yemen with him.
Truss said he was pleased that Luke Symons, who was unlawfully detained in Yemen since 2017 without charge or trial, has been released.
Luke was 25 when he was unlawfully detained by the Houthis. His son was only a few months old at the time. He was accused of being mistreated, in solitary confinement, and refused visits from his family.
He will be reunited with his family in the UK soon after he has been flown to Muscat.
We thank our partners in Omani and Saudi Arabia for their support in securing his release.
I want to pay tribute to our excellent staff for their hard work in returning Luke home. Symons was released on April 2 after a two-month truce was implemented in Yemen. It is the first nationwide ceasefire in the Middle Eastern country in the past six years in a deadly civil war that began in 2014. In the year that followed, Iranian-backed Houthis seized Sana and forced the internationally recognised government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try to restore the government to power.