Huda slit her wrists. Her father tried to save her, but she died before they reached the hospital. “I woke up in the morning to my wife screaming,” he says. “We were in total shock, all sorts of questions were going through my mind. Why? How? When? I couldn't save my daughter.” 

Huda had had a six-month love affair with a young man she met online. From the beginning, she was open with him about being disabled, but that did not stop them from getting together. Huda believed his promise of engagement and marriage and sent him private photos, only to fall into the trap of blackmail that drove her to end her life.

The young man began threatening to post her photos online if she refused to meet him or send him money. According to her father, Huda could not afford the amount the man was demanding, so he went ahead and posted her photos. 

Huda was partially paralysed as a result of an accident she had suffered as a child. She had not left the house since, and tended to shut herself away, with no friends. She even left school after the primary level, according to her father. 

“Lately, I had noticed she always had a smile on her face. She was full of life. But then her life was turned upside down.” 

A few days before her suicide, Huda's condition worsened. Her father suggested she see a doctor, but she refused. Then, the night before, Huda told her sister about her anxieties and fears. Her sister tried to reassure her and convince her that there was a way out. 

But the blackmailer wasted no time in posting her photos on Facebook. Huda could not bear the shock and opted to take her own life.

Victims of Trust

Souad, now 32, gazes at her missing leg as she recalls what she went through: “This is my weakness, and he knew that.” 

Seven years ago, Souad’s leg was amputated above the knee after she was hit by shrapnel when a missile struck her home in Sana'a. Her family could not afford to pay for her to have a prosthetic limb fitted, so she stayed as she was.

Souad found an outlet through social media, somewhere she could express herself and share her worries. Ahmed* left several comments on one of her posts. At the time she did not find this odd, as many people had responded to the post. But Ahmed started looking up her old posts, leaving comments and likes here and there.

Souad says things developed between them, and they started talking on Messenger. Ahmed offered a solution to her problem, telling her that a benefactor wanted to cover the cost of her operation.

Souad was overjoyed, as she wanted nothing more than to be able to walk again. “I was elated... He asked me to send him all my medical records and photos of my amputated leg to send to this benefactor.” Souad says he came back two days later asking for a “clearer” of her whole leg, saying the first one was not sharp enough. She had no hesitation in sending him what he asked for.

But then he came back again, asking for a photo of her whole body naked. When Souad refused, he said he would post the photos he already had of her on social media, unless she sent him the naked photo or a sum of money.

Fearing scandal, Souad sent him the money and continued doing so whenever he asked. But it did not stop at money; he began demanding video calls with her. To make sure she complied with his demands, he kept screenshots of their conversations. After a few months, Souad had spent all her money and was no longer able to keep up with his demands.

Gender-based online sexual extortion is defined as the act of threatening to publish or leak on social media images, videos, audio recordings, or conversations if the person threatened does not comply with the blackmailer’s demands. Online extortion is a form of gender-based violence.

There are no official figures for the number of women who have suffered online blackmail in Yemen. However, the Knowledge Center for Strategy Research and Studies, an independent non-profit organisation, published a study on cyber blackmail across several governorates in Yemen. This showed that there were 46 cases of online crime committed against girls in 2003 in Hadhramaut governorate alone. These included 15 cases of blackmail.

Social worker Rania Khaled attributes the rise in online extortion to several factors: the social vacuum, family breakdown, the ease with which any perpetrator can conceal their identity on the internet, difficulty of arresting and prosecuting them, and victims’ fear of “scandal” leading to their silence and concession to the criminal. 

Rania makes clear that online violence has serious negative effects on women in general, including family breakdown and divorce, domestic violence (beatings and insults), panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia and unhealthy eating habits, accompanied by suicidal thoughts and depression. But she says the psychological impact is much worse for women with disabilities because of their low self-esteem, which generates feelings of need and vulnerability.

Rania Khaled adds that, for these women, online blackmail is usually more painful and complex, and their suffering is therefore more intense.

Absent Laws and Delayed Justice

Souad turned to one of her friends, who advised her to send her complaint to Sanad for Digital Rights, an independent organisation giving help to victims of online blackmail. The group's volunteers managed to track down the blackmailer, recover the money Souad had paid, and delete the photos.

Journalist Mokhtar Abdulmuezz, director of Sanad for Digital Rights, says he does not have accurate figures on the number of girls with disabilities who have fallen victim to online extortion, but he reckons that it could be one in every four to five women and girls.

Because there is nothing in Yemeni law that explicitly covers cybercrimes, the authorities use the Crimes and Penalties Law and its amendments to prosecute perpetrators - particularly Articles 313 and 254.

“Anyone who intentionally causes fear of harm to another person shall be punished by imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or by a fine.’

In early 2024, the public prosecutor of the internationally recognised Yemeni government set up a special unit to combat online blackmail using social media in the southern province of Aden.

Human rights activist and lawyer Huda Al-Sarari says such a step is important, given the increase in criminal online blackmail, but asks, “What law is going to be applied here and what punishment will the perpetrator face?”

Al-Sarari says that online blackmail is being dealt with under laws that were passed before the digital age and there is a need to have specific laws to tackle cyber extortion.

Regarding people with disabilities, Al-Sarari says that the law does not distinguish between them and the able-bodied, and that the rights of the disabled need to be redoubled.

In a study across 15 Yemeni governorates between 2019 and 2021, civil society observers found that with the start of the war in 2015, committees and associations defending the rights of the disabled  and the National Strategy for Disability of 2014-2018 had ceased to function.