Shia fighters hold the women in secret detention centres based in villas on charges of prostitution or collaborating with Saudi-led coalition. Mr Fadel told the Associated Press said that women were then sent to secret detentions in villas across the rebel-held capital. A Yemeni human rights lawyer working on the issue said women were taken from cafes and parks over the past months, and their families had begun searching for their missing daughters.
Within Houthi jails inmates were allegedly subject to extreme torture, including being strung by their wrists or genitals for weeks at a time, and doused in acid or melted plastic.
One survivor, Monir al-Shariq was so horrifically tortured he was left unable to speak. So far most of the detainees are believed to men. However, the anti-trafficking organisation said this week that mass arrests of women started after the Houthi appointment a year ago of Sultan Zabin as head of the Sanaa criminal investigation division. It also denied the existence of secret prisons and illegal and arbitrary detentions and vowed to prosecute those behind the reports.
The news of the targeting of women comes as representatives of the warring factions in Yemen meet in Jordan to work on implementing a prisoner-swap agreed to during the last round of talks, in Sweden in December. Under a ceasefire deal, both sides agreed to withdraw from the city and hand it over to local government together with UN monitors. On Thursday, unknown gunmen fired at the convoy of the head of a UN mission charged monitoring the truce as the officials left a key meeting.
Maj Gen Cammaert had been in the port city since late December trying to get the internationally recognised government and the Houthis to redeploy their forces as per the Swedish agreement. Instead, the Houthis pretended to cede control of the port to naval forces by dressing their fighters in coastguard uniforms.
