'Houthis could free detained political leader under swap deal,' says UN

Yemen's Houthi rebels could free a political leader with ties to the internationally recognised government who has been detained for nearly a decade, under a preliminary prisoner swap deal announced by the United Nations on Monday.

Mohamed Qahtan is the leader of the Sunni Islamist Islah party, which is aligned with the Saudi Arabia-backed government, and he has been held incommunicado by the Iranian-backed Houthis since 2015, the United Nations said.

The office of UN special envoy Hans Grundberg convened a meeting in Oman with the International Committee of the Red Cross over the weekend to facilitate talks centred on a prisoner exchange, in accordance with the 2018 Stockholm Agreement, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

The two Yemeni sides agreed to meet to discuss the final list of who will be released and the details of Qahtan's release, Dujarric said, without providing details on the potential agreement.

Qahtan's release has been a point of contention for years, Dujarric ..