Yemen

Yemeni authorities have launched a campaign to suppress independent journalism in the country, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Authorities have announced a special court to try media and publishing offences. One of the latest victims of the media crackdown launched nearly two weeks ago is Yahya Bamahfud, a blogger and former editor of the Hadhramaut news...

Amid an increasing crackdown on the media in Yemen, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for Yemeni authorities to disclose the whereabouts of a journalist who has been held incommunicado since May 4 after he was arrested in southern Yemen. CPJ also called on the authorities to drop a series of lawsuits against an independent critical newspaper. Security forces arrested Fuad...

Yemen has banned eight newspapers that have covered unrest in the southern part of the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. Dozens of journalists gathered on May 7 in front of the country's press syndicate in the capital, Sana'a, to protest the government's decision to suspend the newspapers, the Associated Press reported. A similar demonstration was held in the...

After confiscating thousands of copies of a critical independent newspaper, authorities laid siege on May 4 to the paper's offices in Aden, Yemen. The daily, Al-Ayyam, has been covering the ongoing conflict in the country's southern region. Bashraheel Bashraheel, general manager of Al-Ayyam, told CPJ that after three consecutive days of authorities confiscating thousands of copies of the newspaper...

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has denounced the prosecution of Nizar Al-Abadi, an Iraqi journalist who has been living in Yemen since 1991. ANHRI has also condemned the actions of the public prosecutor, the press and publishers who are acting on behalf of the state security forces against journalists working within the law and the regulations of their profession. Al-Abadi...

Leading Yemen journalist Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani has been released from prison shortly after President Ali Abdullah Saleh granted him amnesty and ordered cancellation of his six-year jail sentence that was handed to him earlier for conspiring with anti-government rebels. After leaving prison, al-Khaiwani told the News Yemen website that his release "is a victory for all Yemeni journalists and...

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has written to Yemeni interior minister Mutahar Rashad Al-Masri calling for the immediate release of two brothers, Ali Nasser Kaid Al-Bokheiti and Mohammed Ahmed Hassan Al-Bokheiti, who were arrested on July 21 at a military roadblock with a British freelance journalist for whom they working as fixers. The British journalist was deported the same day. They have been...

The International Press Institute (IPI) has condemned the jailing of Mohammed Al-Mokaleh, one of the founding members of the Yemeni Journalist Syndicate, for laughing in a Yemeni court. On June 15, a Yemeni prosecutor accused Al-Mokaleh of "attacking and defaming the judicial system," for laughing out loud during the concluding moments of the trial of Abdelkarim Al-Khaiwani, former editor-in-chief...

A six-year jail sentence has been handed down to an outspoken Yemeni journalist accused of conspiring with anti-government rebels. A state security court in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, Monday sentenced Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani, editor of an opposition news website, to six years in prison for being an alleged member of a cell of anti-government rebels and conspiring to carry out attacks on government...

The Yemeni government has cancelled the licence of independent weekly newspaper Al-Wasat. On Saturday last, Information Minister Hassan al-Lawzi ordered the newspaper’s licence terminated because the paper had damaged relations with Saudi Arabia, and violated technical provisions of the press law, according to local journalists and official press accounts. A Yemeni government spokesman who asked...