Every hostage taken from Israel on October 7 has come home. One Jewish captive is still held far from Gaza. The Jerusalem Post reports that Levi Salem Musa Marhabi, a Yemeni Jew, remains in the hands of Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis, even though a Houthi appeals court ordered his release in 2019.

Marhabi was arrested in March 2016 for helping a Jewish family and an 800-year-old Torah leave Yemen, the Post reports. In March 2018 he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. That term ended long ago. He is still detained in Sanaa, where Houthi terrorists continue to torture and mistreat him, according to the Post.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom says the Houthis have beaten and electrocuted Marhabi, deprived him of food and blocked him from contact with his family. The Post reports the abuse has caused his teeth to fall out and worsened his kidney and lung conditions, and that he suffers from medical neglect. The American Sephardi Federation reports that years of mistreatment have left him partially paralyzed.

After Hamas' invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, the Houthis moved Marhabi to a prison ward with extremists who threatened him, USCIRF said. A 10-day prison strike eventually led the Houthis to put him in solitary confinement, the Post reports.

The Post notes that over the past three years, hundreds of Jewish hostages have been freed across the Middle East. They include the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Israeli-Russian researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, released after more than two years in captivity in Iraq. Marhabi has not been among them.

In 2021, Asharq Al-Awsat reported that the Houthis reached a deal to free Marhabi by exiling the last three Jewish families in Yemen in exchange for his release. One of the displaced Jews told the paper: "They gave us a choice between staying in the midst of harassment and keeping Salem a prisoner or leaving and having him released." The families left. Marhabi, the Post reports, still has not been released.