24 March 2005

Alert

President pardons jailed editor


Incident details

Abdelkarim al-Khaiwani

(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a CPJ press release:

Yemen: President Pardons Jailed Editor

New York, March 23, 2005 - The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes today's presidential pardon of a Yemeni editor who was jailed for nearly seven months for publishing opinion articles that strongly criticized the government.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh pardoned Abdelkarim al-Khaiwani, editor of the opposition weekly Al-Shoura, a spokesman for Yemen's embassy in Washington, D.C., told CPJ today. The spokesman, Mohammed al-Basha, said he did not have details of the pardon or the timing of al-Khaiwani's release.

On Tuesday, a Yemeni appellate court upheld a one-year prison sentence against al-Khaiwani, who had been convicted in September 2004 of incitement, "insulting" Saleh, publishing false news, and causing tribal and sectarian discrimination. He had been charged in connection with opinion pieces published in his newspaper that condemned the government's fight against rebel cleric Hussein Badreddin al-Hawthi, who led a three-month uprising in the northern Yemeni region of Saada last summer before the army killed him in September.

Al-Shoura was also suspended from publication in September although the newspaper has since launched a successor publication, Sawt Al-Shoura. It is unclear whether today's pardon reverses the ban against Al-Shoura.

"We welcome President Saleh's pardon and look forward to our colleague's release," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "But the fact remains that Abdelkarim al-Khaiwani should never have been jailed in the first place. We hope that Yemeni officials will use his release as an opportunity to take decisive action to eliminate laws that can be used to jail journalists for their work."

CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.cpj.org



Source:

Committee to Protect Journalists
330 7th Ave., 11th Floor
New York, NY 10001
USA
info (@) cpj.org
Phone: +1 212 465 1004
Fax: +1 212 465 9568
 

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More on this case

Court upholds sentence against imprisoned journalist, judge orders prosecutor to question other journalists 23 March 2005 Lawyers for imprisoned editor assaulted 10 March 2005 After six months in prison, journalist appears before appeals court 7 March 2005 CPJ protests imprisonment of opposition weekly's editor 17 September 2004 Editor-in-chief of weekly sentenced to one year in prison; newspaper suspended for six months 7 September 2004

Yemen

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