Preposterous charges have been brought against the Sabaa news agency reporter Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae, whose trial before a special state security court is due to start Monday, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF).
A specialist in covering Al-Qaeda, Shae has been charged by the attorney-general with inciting the murder of the president and his son, “belonging to a rebel group seeking to attack the country’s security” and “supporting it through the media and encouraging young people to join it.” His lawyers, who have not been allowed to visit him since his arrest in August, have said they will boycott the trial on the grounds that it is illegal and unjust.
“Shae has been detained in an iniquitous manner that contravenes all the legal principles in force in Yemen and his physical condition has been undermined by mistreatment, torture and solitary confinement,” RSF said. “As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights since 1987, Yemen should respect his right to a fair trial.”
Initially arrested on a Sanaa street on July 11, Shae was released after being interrogated for several hours. He was rearrested on August 16, placed in a Sanaa prison and then taken to a detention centre run by the intelligence services.
According to his lawyers, he bore the marks of blows on various parts of his body when he was taken before a court on September 22, and one of his teeth was broken. The court ordered him held for another 30 days on the grounds that further investigation was needed. That deadline expired on October 22.
RSF also expressed concern over the continual attacks on journalists, especially by members of the security forces, who should be protecting them.
Al Jazeera cameraman Mohammed Al-Said and correspondent Hamdy Al-Bakary were manhandled by police and briefly detained in the southern city of Aden on October 24 while covering the trial of five men accused of bombing the Al-Wahda sports club in Aden earlier this month. The authorities did not offer any explanation for the incident.
Ghazi Al-Alawi, a member of the staff of the Aden-based newspaper Al-Oumana Al-Ahliya and a correspondent for the Al-Masdar Online news website, was beaten up by gunmen while covering an independence day celebration organized by the secessionist South Yemen Movement in Al-Habilin on October 14. His camera was broken and he was taken to Radfan hospital for treatment to his injuries,
The assault took place just hours after his newspaper reported that President Ali Abdallah Saleh had met secretly with Ali Mounassar Mohammed, the secretary of the opposition Yemeni Socialist Party in Aden and leader of the South Yemen Movement, who was one of Alawi’s assailants.
Journalist and human rights activist Tawakol Abdulsalam Karman, the head of Women Journalists Without Chains, was detained for three hours on October 12 for organising and participating in a demonstration in solidarity with residents of the Jaachen neighbourhood in Sanaa who had been evicted by Sheikh Nafedh.
A special court for press and publication matters fined Al-Nass managing editor Oussama Ghalib and reporter Fawzy Al-Kahily 50,000 real (165 euros) on October 9 on a charge of insulting and libelling the head of the Al-Mithaq Foundation for Publications, Adil Mohamed Qaid, by publishing documents in issue No. 20 of 2008 implicating members of the foundation in corruption.
