No word about Mohammed Al-Asadi since April

It seems the trial and punishment of Mohammed Al-Asadi is on hold. He still sits in a Yemen jail on bogus trumped up charges. His own paper (the Yemen Observer), which is no illegal in print copy hasn't said anything since back in April.

He's an interview with him from back in Feb of 2006 with Rod Norland of Newsweek:

NEWSWEEK: Is this your first time in jail?
Mohammed al-Asadi: It's the first time ever I've been a prisoner, or even in front of a judge.

How are the accommodations?
I'm in a temporary prison, awaiting a hearing, so it's not so bad. It's a basement, and we have to buy everything we need, even bottled water. There are 15 of us sharing one big room and one toilet, but the others aren't common criminals. A couple are journalists, because it's the prison of the prosecutor for press and publications.

You mean to say the government has a prosecutor dedicated to the press, and that prosecutor has a dedicated jail?
That is one of the characteristics of the Yemeni government, putting journalists in jail to stop us from telling the truth to the public.

This is a different sort of case though. Tell us how it came about?
When we ran our article on the Danish cartoons, it was all about how the Prophet should be honored, with quotations from famous people about what an important figure he was, and a news story on Yemeni protests. We reprinted the cartoons but blacked them out. Unfortunately by an innocent mistake in the production process, a thumbnail of the cartoons appeared on the front page—only 1.5cm [0.6 of an inch] by 2cm [0.8 of an inch], you could hardly read it. But then the owner of a local news paper approached the Yemen Observer owners to blackmail us—or they would raise a stink. We refused, and they collected signatures on a petition that they presented to the prosecutor. Theirs is a newspaper that lives by blackmail, everybody knows that. But the government responded by revoking our license to publish and putting me in jail.

So your own colleagues instigated your arrest? Isn't that a sad commentary on the press in Yemen?
Yes it is, but this isn't a legitimate newspaper. It's an instrument of blackmail, any journalist in Yemen would tell you that. They're not even members of the journalists' guild.

Nonetheless, you're now being prosecuted for an offense with a possible life sentence. And some religious leaders, including some who are even members of the Yemeni Parliament, have called for your execution. And the government says they're keeping you in prison in the meantime for your own protection?

I don't believe that for a moment. Even if you were a Danish person you could walk the streets of Yemen safely, and I could too. But people in the street are wiser than the government.

Your newspaper has been closely identified with the government, so is this the result of some sort of factional dispute within it?
The Yemen Observer has an independent line, and while it's true that our owner is close to the government, when he hired me he granted me complete editorial independence. He had no say over what I published.

-more of the interview here-

Mohammed_Al-Asadi at Wikipedia


Yemen maintains an embassy in the United States. Please contact them about this terrible situation.

Embassy of the Republic of Yemen
2319 Wyoming Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20008
Telephone: (202) 965-4760
Fax: (202) 337-2017