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SANAA, YEMEN —  A high-ranking Houthi official told MintPress that the group will demand Saudi Arabia return the body of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi to his family as part of a mass prisoner exchange with the Saudi-led coalition. The official added that the demand will be made if Khashoggi’s sons request that it be part of the exchange.

The president of Ansar Allah’s Supreme Revolutionary Committee, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, said on Twitter, after the warring parties struck a breakthrough ceasefire agreement, that “if Khashoggi’s sons ask or if they want us to demand their father’s body then we will do it,” adding that the slain journalist was [like Yemen] also a victim of Saudi aggression.

Al-Houthi said that Khashoggi’s sons should inform the Houthis before the prisoner swap takes place. The Saudi-led coalition agreed during peace talks in Sweden last week to a mass exchange of over 15,000 prisoners and detainees. The exchange is expected to take place at the end of January.

Khashoggi, who had been critical of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, was killed in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul on October 6. Khashoggi’s remains have still not been recovered, but reports indicate that Saudi agents dismembered the body and dissolved it in acid.

In related prisoner exchange news, Riyadh has released Buthaina Muhammad Mansour al-Raimi, a Yemeni child who was kidnaped by Saudi mercenaries from Sana’a and brought to Riyadh last year after Saudi warplanes destroyed her home using U.S. manufactured bombs. Buthaina, who was used by Saudi Arabia in a propaganda war against Yemen’s resistance, returned to Sana’a on Thursday.

Buthaina along with the Houthi`s Head of the Committee of Prisoners, Abdulqader al-Murtaza, after her release and return to Sana’a, December 20, 2018.

Buthaina, who was the only survivor of a Saudi airstrike on her home last year her, became famous after images of her trying to open her bruised eyes went viral on social media, with hundreds of people posting their own pictures striking a similar pose in solidarity with the young girl.

Top Photo  | A man lights a candle during a vigil for Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi outside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Oct. 25, 2018. Khashoggi was killed by Saudi government personnel while he was in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Lefteris Pitarakis | AP

Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.

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