Yemen

Yemeni authorities have seized equipment that enable the pan-Arab satellite news channels Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera to broadcast live from the country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Security forces raided the Sana’a offices of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya on Thursday, according to news reports and CPJ interviews. The move came after both channels had broadcast clashes...

Muhammad al-Rabou'e, a Yemeni reporter for the monthly Al-Qahira who wrote several articles about the alleged activities of an infamous criminal group was killed Saturday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Al-Jazeera and other news outlets said five individuals burst into Al-Rabou'e home in the district of Beni Qais, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajja, and shot him...

Mohammed Shu’i Al-Rabu’i, a correspondent for several news media including the opposition newspaper Al-Qahira, was gunned down on February 13 in the district of Beni Qais (in the governorate of Hajja), 120 km northwest of Sana’a, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Those allegedly responsible have already been arrested. “We offer this journalist’s colleagues and family our heartfelt...

Muhammad al-Maqaleh, editor of the opposition Yemeni Socialist Party’s news website Aleshteraki, who was detained in September has finally appeared in government custody. He is being held without charges, local news outlets reported, and alleges that he has been tortured, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Al-Maqaleh was detained by unidentified men in Sana’a after writing an...

Yemeni journalist Moaz Ashhabi was sentenced on January 16 to one year in prison by a court in Sana’a dealing with press matters which also banned him from working as journalist for one year for “falsification" of the Koran, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The charge related to his column that was carried by the weekly al-Thaqafa (Culture) on October 7, 2009. Ashhabi was taken to the...

A three-month jail sentence has been slapped by a Sana’a special court for press matters on Anissa Mohammed Ali Othman for “insulting the president” in two articles for the weekly Al-Wassat in July 2007. The court on Saturday also banned her from working as a journalist for a year and fined her editor, Jamal Amer 10,000 rials (34 euros), Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Published in...

The 66-year-old editor of the daily al-Ayyam, Hisham Bashraheel, was arrested on January 6, the day after the security forces lifted a 24-hour siege of his newspaper in Aden, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. One of his sons, managing editor, Hani Bashraheel, was also arrested at the same time. Another son of Hisham Bashraheel, Mohammed Hisham Bashraheel, was arrested on January 5. It...

Police on Tuesday lifted a siege of the newspaper al-Ayyam, after 24 hours of clashes between security forces and the newspaper’s own armed guards. Sources contacted by Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said that two people were killed in the confrontation, one newspaper guard and one member of the security forces. Seven more were injured. Witnesses said that a guard mortally wounded a police...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned Yemen’s attempt to use the current anti-terror push to crush human rights after security forces today fired on a crowd of protestors staging a ‘sit-in’ outside the offices of a banned newspaper. “The Ali Abdallah Saleh government is taking advantage of support from foreign powers in the fight against terrorism on its soil to deliberately violate people...

This has been a grim year for Yemen’s independent press, the victim of an media war waged by the government under the guise of combating terrorism and sedition, and the situation could get even worse in 2010, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said Thursday, following the arrests of two more journalists in the past four days. The first of the past week’s media arrests was that of Khalid Jahafi, a...