Prominent editor Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani has been arrested under murky circumstances in Yemen. Sources report the journalist was dragged from his house in the middle of the night and beaten while being taken into custody. According to the opposition weekly, Al-Sahwa, al-Khaiwani's lawyer has not been informed of the charges:

The deputy of the Yemeni Journalist Syndicate Saeed Thabit said that policemen have raided Abdul-Karim al-khaiwani's home, arrested him and put him in prison. Thabit said that the Yemeni lawyer, Khalid al-Anisi is still seeking to know reasons behind his arrest. For their part, scores of journalist sat-in before the Penal Court, protesting al-Khaiwani arrest .

Al-Khaiwani has been a frequent regime target for his outspoken opinions on corruption, hereditary presidency, and the Sa'ada war. In a politically motivated judicial procedure, Al-Khaiwani was sentenced to a year in jail in 2004. The charges related to nine Op-Eds published by al-Shoura, where al-Khaiwani was the editor. The articles were written by a variety of authors. RSF called the verdict arbitrary censorship and IFEX and CPJ condemned the ruling. Al-Khaiwani spent seven months in jail before being pardoned in March 2005.

In May 2005, armed men stormed the offices of al-Shoura and, after evicting the staff, proceeded to (and continue to) publish the paper in a tactic known as "cloning." From CPJ :

Yemeni security services are also believed to be responsible for commandeering or "cloning" outspoken Yemeni newspapers—establishing similarly titled and similar-looking newspapers to undercut the originals and confuse readers. Before its closure last year, the office of the opposition weekly Al-Shoura was taken over by armed men believed to be allied with the government and a new management team set up. Despite appearances, the new title carried a much different, pro-government editorial line.

The al-Shoura website which contains authentic content edited by al-Khaiwani was blocked within Yemen prior to Yemen's presidential election in September. It was unblocked and then again blocked again at the onset of the Sa'ada war in January 2007.

Currently the Yemeni government finds itself threatened by *text messaging* and has required news outlets to discontinue the service as the Yemen Times reported:

Prime Minister Ali Mujawar met with representatives of the protestors yesterday and agreed to unblock the web sites, but banned all SMS services except Saba Mobile Services by the official Saba News Agency, Yemen’s only and official news agency. This means even international mobile news services, such as Al-Jazeera and Reuters, now are banned in Yemen.

Yesterday journalists in Yemen engaged in the sixth week of a regular sit-ins protesting the lack of private ownership of Yemeni media, the restriction on text messaging, the inability of some civil society activists to obtain new newspaper licenses. News Yemen interviewed some of the protesting journalists and activists:

The political activist Abdul-Malik al-Mikhlafi called for bringing down "the totalitarian mentality which controls everything".

"The totalitarian mentality rules us, not laws most of which need to be amended including the publication and press law," said al-Mikhlafi....

The lawyer Khalid al-Ansi affirmed that outing electronic media under siege is impossible. "The greatest countries and most developed in technology could not do so with electronic media," said al-Ansi. "We are with law, but we are at the same time against all forms of oppression and abolishing freedom of opinion...."

The lawyer Jamal al-Jaabi said that the monopolization of audio and video media has not any legislative base. "It is an attempt to keep Yemeni people unaware of the country's issues", said al-Jaabi.

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