A UN human rights staffer has died in Houthi custody after more than two years, and his family was told more than a month after it happened

For more than two years the United Nations asked the Houthi authorities in Sanaa for information about Mohammad el Shami's wellbeing, and for proof of life, and received neither. On Saturday the UN announced that he is dead, that he died more than a month ago, and that his family learned of it only recently, with no explanation of how or why.

El Shami worked for the UN Human Rights Office in Yemen. He was detained on June 6, 2024, in a wave of Houthi raids in which 13 UN staff were seized and more than 60 people working for the UN and aid organisations were taken in all. The Houthis said those detained were part of a spy network working for the United States and Israel. Turk called the death utterly devastating and demanded full transparency, disclosure of all medical and detention records, preservation of evidence and independent scrutiny of any stated cause of death. Guterres added his condemnation in a separate statement and said the UN is urgently seeking answers about the circumstances.

El Shami is the second UN staff member to die in Houthi detention. A World Food Programme staffer died in February 2025. As of mid October the UN said 71 of its personnel were in Houthi detention, and Yemen's prime minister, who condemned the death and held the Houthis fully responsible, said more than 70 UN employees and dozens of humanitarian workers remain detained, including seven of Turk's own colleagues. The UN paused operations in parts of Houthi held Yemen in February 2025 over the safety of its staff.

There was no immediate comment from the Houthis on the death itself. That silence is now the fact both UN statements are built around. A detention system that holds aid workers for years without proof of life has produced a death it has not explained, and the demand from Geneva is not only for the living to be released. It is for the records of the dead man to be handed over.