In recognition of International Human Rights Day, celebrated on December 10, the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, announced new designations and highlighted the human-rights related sanctions actions it took during 2024.
The new sanctions are being imposed on the Houthi National Committee for Prisoner’s Affairs, the HNCPA, and its leader Abdulqader Al-Murtadha. HNCPA operates Houthi Prisons in Yemen. According to the UN, the Treasury Department said in statement, prisoners in the Exchange House in Sana’a are systematically subjected to psychological and physical torture, including mock executions, beatings, and electrocution, among other abuses. Detainees include formerly employed local U.S. Embassy and UN staff, humanitarian workers, and journalists. Al-Murtadha was designated for being a leader of a government entity that has engaged in or whose members have engaged in serious human rights abuse relating to the leader’s tenure.
The second individual sanctioned is Fawaz al-Akhras for having materially assisted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with financial matters, sanctions evasion, and attempts to achieve international political engagement. Assad himself was designated in 2011 and 2020 because of the serious human rights abuses perpetrated by his government in Syria, including forced disappearances, arbitrary arrest of political dissidents, torture and sexual violence in detention facilities.
The Treasury Department notes that since January 2024, OFAC has designated more than 100 individuals and entities associated with human rights abuse across more than 20 jurisdictions. “These actions,” the Treasury Department wrote, “have targeted an array of activities, including national and transnational repression, forced disappearances and hostage taking, gender-based violence, human trafficking, including forced labor, and human rights abuse perpetrated by terrorist and criminal organizations.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement, “The United States is strongly committed to promoting respect for human rights, and Treasury is proud of its longstanding use of our tools for this purpose.” She noted that the “Office of Foreign Funds Control, as OFAC was formerly known, was established during World War II to prevent the Nazi regime from leveraging the assets of occupied countries to expand the war and further its systematic campaign of atrocities. We are proud,” Secretary Yellen declared, “to build on this important legacy of shining a light on instances of serious human rights abuse.”
