Cardiff man released after 5 years in Yemen detention

A Welshman has been freed from jail in Yemen after five years of captivity without accusation or trial.

Luke Symons, 25, of Cardiff, was kidnapped in 2017 by the Houthis, a rebel group battling the Yemeni government in the country’s civil conflict.

He was apprehended on suspicion of spying, a charge his family has dismissed as “crazy.”

Liz Truss, the UK’s foreign secretary, expressed gratitude to “our Omani and Saudi colleagues for their assistance in achieving his release.”

“I am relieved that Luke Symons, who has been wrongfully jailed in Yemen without charge or trial since 2017, has been released,” Ms. Truss said.

He was allegedly abused, placed in solitary confinement, and denied family visits; he was taken to Muscat [in Oman], and will soon be reunited with his family in the United Kingdom.”

He was one among 14 individuals whose release Oman claimed to have facilitated. They have been detained in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital under Houthi rule.

They have now been taken to Oman’s capital, Muscat, in preparation to be flown home.

In his late teens, Mr. Symons converted to Islam and took the name Jamal.

At the age of 20, he visited Mecca and then traveled to Egypt and then Yemen, where he taught English and married.

When turmoil erupted in 2015, he and his wife Tagreed fled the country but were unable to return due to her passport being lost in the pandemonium.

They returned to Yemen and had a child, but continued to look for ways to flee the country’s horrific civil conflict.

Two years later, he was detained as a suspected spy while presenting his British passport to withdraw money to facilitate his family’s exit from Yemen.

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