More than two weeks have gone by without any news of reporter Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae and cartoonist Kamal Sharaf since their arrests in Sanaa on August 16 and 17, which have been followed by an increase in cases of violence against journalists.
An Al-Qaeda specialist who works for the Saba new agency, Shae was arrested at his home at the end of the daily Ramadan fast on the evening of August 16. Heavily-armed police in bullet-proof vests surrounded the house, fired warning shots and then stormed inside. Shae was beaten and insulted in front of his family before being taken away in handcuffs. All of his personal documents were seized. He was previously arrested by three plainclothes men on July 11, when he was interrogated for six hours by intelligence officials about statements he had made on Al Jazeera about Al-Qaeda's activities in Yemen. Sharaf, who works as a reporter for the website Al-Joumhouriya and as a cartoonist for the website Al-Jazeera Nat, was arrested on August 17 in Sana'a.
“It is unacceptable that the authorities have said nothing about the fate of these two journalists, who were arrested by the security forces,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “We urge President Ali Abdallah Saleh to have them released. International law regards holding detainees incommunicado as forced disappearance. We also very disturbed by the surge in violence by the security forces against journalists.”
Journalists who were staging a sit-in in solidarity with Shae and Sharaf outside the attorney-general's office on August 26 were attacked by soldiers, according to RSF. Hassan Abd of Al-Hurra TV was beaten when he refused to hand over his camera to the soldiers, who tried to arrest him. Soldiers also manhandled Nawal Kabassi when trying to confiscate her mobile phone, which she was using to take photos.
Various human rights organisations organised a demonstration in support of the two detained journalists outside the president's office on September 1. The journalists and activists who took part demanded not only their release but also an investigation into the violence used by the security forces at the time of their arrest. During the demonstration, the security forces prevented cameramen working for Al Jazeera and Al-Hurra from filming and threatened to open fire on them. Seven people were briefly detained.
Meanwhile, Ali Hassan, a reporter for the Al-Sahwa website, and two other journalists, Abdel Wassi' Rajih and Samir Nimr, were insulted and attacked by a postal service security guard when they went to cover a protest by postal employees against mismanagement in the service in Hajjah on August 31. The guard drew his gun and aimed it at the journalists and tried to confiscate their equipment. Hajjah's governor said the incident would be investigated.
Military police attacked Abdel Hafez Mou'jib as he was photographing a police operation outside the offices of a charity in Al-Hudaydah, a province to the southwest of the capital, on August 22.
More than 20 journalists were arrested by soldiers on August 22 in Harf Sufyan while on their way to cover a peace conference in the northwestern city of Sa'dah at the invitation of local leaders. They were escorted to Jebel Aswad, where they were released on the president's orders a few hours later but were unable to continue to Sa'dah for the conference.
