Well-Known Yemeni Journalist Detained

JEDDAH, 25 June 2007 — Just two weeks after participating in a judiciary and freedom of the press conference in Kuwait, well-known Yemeni journalist and former editor in chief of the country’s Al-Shoura newspaper, Abdul Karim Al-Khiwani, was forcibly detained last Wednesday by Yemeni national security forces....

“They told me I was arrested because of CDs about the Saada war,” he told Arab News from his cell in Sanaa. The CDs were found in his house following his arrest on Wednesday when he was dragged to the police station still in his pajamas.

“They slapped my seven-year-old daughter while searching the house so hard that she fainted,” said Al-Khiwani.

He said the CDs he had are no secret and that most journalists in Yemen have them. They do not contain terrorist information. They only provide information about the conditions of civilians in Saada and the number of civilians who have died there....

Al-Khiwani thinks that this arrest, his second, is a kind of payback by the Yemeni government. He was arrested for seven months in 2004 for alleged support of the rebel movement in Saada. Al-Khiwani explained in Kuwait and also from his cell that he feels many problems come from his writing in the media about the Yemeni president’s attempts to ensure that his son will inherit the office.

Slapped his daughter so hard she lost consciousness? The actual terror supporters are in the Yemeni government. This is a fact. So they arrest this activist, beat him and his little girl, and call *him* a terrorist? No one is falling for it.

Posted by: JaneNovak at 05:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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