Houthi rebels release at least one of ‘several’ Americans held in Yemen

Houthi rebels have released at least one of “several” Americans in captivity in Yemen, the State Department has confirmed, as neighbouring Oman plays peacemaker for the region’s warring factions.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf identified the freed American as Casey Coombs. An official told the Associated Press that Coombs, who had been injured under unknown circumstances, had reached Oman. Harf said Coombs was in “stable condition” and said diplomats in Oman were “providing all consular assistance”.
Harf added that the US was “grateful to the government of Oman” for its assistance, and that the US was aware of reports of other Americans being held in Yemen. Assistant secretary of state Anne Patterson was in Oman to talk with “a wide swath of Yemenis”, Harf said, and “a variety of organisations inside Yemen”. She would not confirm that Patterson had met with Houthi leaders.
Patterson had held talks about “the crisis writ large”, Harf said, in an effort to broker peace between all sides.
Working with a “third-party country” as mediator was preferable, Harf said, to “sending in American assets” to free the captives. In December, a failed raid by US special forces resulted in the deaths of the American journalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korkie, who were held by al-Qaida militants in south-east Yemen.
There are believed to be at least three Americans still held by Houthi militants, who took over the capital of Sana’a and ousted the US- and Saudi-backed government earlier this year.
An official in Sana’a told Reuters the Houthis still held American Sharif Mobley, who disappeared from his pre-detention trial in 2014 and briefly resurfaced in May. Terrorism charges against Mobley were dropped under the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, but he remained in custody, accused of murdering a prison guard.
A campaign of air strikes against the Houthis, led by Saudi Arabia and assisted by US intelligence, has complicated any tentative diplomacy. Prior to the Houthi takeover, the US had few contacts with leaders of a militia that has fought against a key US ally, Saudi Arabia, and is accused of acting as a proxy force of Iran.
Oman is the only nation of the Gulf Cooperation Council that has not joined the military campaign in Yemen, where Houthi forces continue to fight against coalition forces, various militias and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. On Monday, coalition forces launched another round of air strikes on Yemeni cities.
Many members of Yemen’s ousted government, including President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, fled to Saudi Arabia to escape a conflict that has killed as many as 2,000 people. A Yemeni government spokesperson said the United Nations envoy to Yemen had made progress toward a longer ceasefire and the release of several detained people.
The Omani News Agency reported that a missing Singaporean had also been evacuated to Muscat on Monday, after coordination with “relevant authorities in Yemen”.
Late on Sunday, Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, told CNN “it looked like [one of the captives] was going to be let out of the country, escorted toward the airport and then many officials changed their minds”.
Unknown militants have also detained a French woman, Isabelle Prime, and on Monday released a video in which she plead for assistance and appeared frail and in poor health. A French official confirmed the video’s authenticity and said the government was “mobilized to obtain [her] release”.