Armies of Liberation

This is an article from Rolling Stone magazine about a Yemeni jihaddi, and it traces his life story from Yemen to Afghansitan to Kosovo and Britian back to Yemen. I have to read the article again, but this was interesting:

By this time, however, the nature of the insurgency had changed. Al-Zarqawi had succeeded, for the moment, in taking over the homegrown resistance. Many of Saddam’s former secret police and Republican Guard were now integrated into cells with jihadists like Khalid. The leadership of Al Qaeda had financial resources and strategic expertise that the Iraqis lacked, and the foreign fighters were more willing to die than the local Sunnis — and more willing to kill civilians.

Disturbed by the killings, Khalid began to rethink the role of jihad in his life. Would his faith really justify killing his British neighbors in their own country? Would he ever be able to live a normal life? Hearing about Yemenis he knew who had disappeared into the gulag at Guantanamo, he feared he could end up in prison for life, a fate he considered worse than death.

The doubts intensified after he returned home to Yemen and was arrested earlier this year. “Enough is enough,” his father implored. “It’s time to settle down and stop this stuff.” After Khalid was released from prison, he and a group of other Afghan Arabs — the blanket term for those who fought or trained in Afghanistan — were summoned to a meeting with Ali Abdullah Salih, the president of Yemen, who was trying to contain the jihadists. In private, Salih called them “my sons” and said he had been pressured by the Bush administration to crack down on them. He also did something seldom acknowledged in the war on terror: He offered to pay them off to stop fighting.

“We will help you get jobs, get married,” Salih told the men. “Write down your name and what you want.”

Amnesty International greatly deplores the execution of Fuad ‘Ali Mohsen al-Shahari, who was executed by firing squad in Taiz this morning. A lawyer and former member of the opposition Socialist Party, he had been on death row for over nine years. He was sentenced to death for murder in 1996 at the end of a grossly unfair trial.

The execution was carried out despite many appeals by Amnesty International and others, including the European Union, and Yemen’s own Human Rights Ministry, one of the country’s leading judges and Yemeni human rights groups.

Fuad al-Shahari was sentenced to death in November 1996 when he was convicted of the murder of Captain Mohammed al-’Ameri, a security official and member of the ruling General People’s Congress Party, during a gun battle earlier that year. After his arrest, Fuad al-Shahari was held incommunicado for one month during which, he alleged, he was tortured and forced to confess to the killing, which he denied committing. This “confession” – four different versions were said to have been included in the charge sheets – reportedly formed the basis for his conviction. The court failed to investigate his allegations of torture and prospective defence witnesses were said to have been deterred from appearing to give evidence by the presence of armed men in the court.

Despite this, the Court of Appeal upheld the death sentence in May 1999. A further appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court in March 2004, though by the Commercial Division not by the Criminal Division of the court that would normally consider such cases. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh ratified the death sentence on 6 September 2005 after the Attorney General’s office reported that it had reviewed the case on the President’s instructions but found no procedural errors.

This morning, two hours before he was executed, lawyers acting for Fuad al-Shahari sought to obtain a court injunction to prevent his execution, in accordance with Article 529 of Yemen’s Penal Code. The Code provides that in such cases, execution should be deferred pending the court’s consideration of the defence petition, but in this case the execution proceeded as planned.

Fuad al-Shahari’s involvement in the largely southerner-dominated Socialist Party, which fought and lost a bitter civil war in 1994 against the northern-based General People’s Congress, together with the unfair nature of his trial, has long given rise to concerns that the case against him may have been politically-motivated or influenced by tribal factors.

Confession under torture? Defense witneses deterred? Appeal denied? When the country’s own HR minister objects, you know something is up.

Summary from IFEX, a very good organization which documents the struggle for and the repression of freedom of expression all countries.

IFEX members are raising the alarm over a worsening clampdown on Yemen’s press, where several journalists have been violently attacked, opposition newspapers closed and editors prosecuted for investigating corruption or other sensitive issues affecting senior officials.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says there have been four violent attacks on journalists in the past five months, including the stabbing of freelance journalist Nabil Subaie on 12 November 2005 in the capital, Sanaa.

Subaie regularly writes for the opposition newspapers “Al-Thawri”, “Al-Shoura”, “Al-Nida’a”, and “Al-Tajammu” and recently criticized President Ali Abdullah Saleh for appointing several family members to key government positions.

On 4 November, Mujeeb Suwailih of the pan-Arab news channel Al-Arabiya and Najib al-Sharabi of the Saudi Arabian satellite channel Al-Ekhbariya were attacked by Yemeni security officers while covering a strike by textile factory workers in Sanaa. Suwailih suffered internal bleeding, three broken ribs and severe bruising on his legs.

Other journalists attacked included Jamal Amer, editor of the weekly “Al-Wasat”, and Haji al-Jehafi, editor of the weekly “Al-Nahar.”

CPJ says none of the assaults have been properly investigated by Yemeni authorities. Two of the attacks have been linked to security officials.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) says two newspapers and four journalists have also been banned in the past 10 days, including opposition newspaper “Al-Tajammu”.

On 27 November, a court ordered the publication suspended for “sectarianism” and “attacking Islam’s image” in a September 2004 article likening Yemen’s current political situation to the political turmoil in 1968. Editor Abdul Rahman Abdallah and reporter Abdul Rahma Saeed, who wrote the article, were each fined the equivalent of US$260 and barred from being published for a year.

Meanwhile, a new media law about to be passed by the government could signal an end to Yemen’s free press, warns ARTICLE 19. The group says the proposed Press and Publications Law contains provisions that will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression, including restrictions on the content of what may be published, and mandatory licences for print media.

Visit:

- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/protests/05ltrs/Yemen16nov05pl.html
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15713
- ARTICLE 19 Analysis of Proposed Press Law: http://tinyurl.com/dje6y
- Freedom House Report: http://tinyurl.com/d2eow
- IPI: http://www.freemedia.at/Protests2005/pr_Yemen03.11.05.htm
- Drug Smuggling and the Yemeni President: http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/2162.cfm
- Has the President Changed His Mind on Reform?

http://www.cpj.org/op_ed/Campagna10mar05.html

ADNKI:

After months of ceasefire, clashes have broken out again between Shiite rebels loyal to the late radical cleric and former MP Hussein al-Houthi and government security forces in the northern Yemeni province of Saada. Eight policemen died in the fighting, US-backed Radio Sawa reports….

However, the fighting began again on Monday when, after several months of hiding in the mountains on the border with Saudi Arabia, rebel fighters gathered in the market of the village of al-Khafti and shouted anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans. The security forces then surrounded the village and a gunfight broke out, forcing the militants to flee.

Police have now significantly stepped up security at roadblocks and surrounded the province in search of those who killed the eight officers. The outbreak of violence comes after several sheikhs in the area went to the police in the last few days, asking them to arrest rebel militants who had been in al-Khafti for some time.

Paul Garwood again:

But many complain that Yemeni authorities are not committed to combatting qat because the crop is such a moneymaker for senior officials and influential tribal leaders.

“Yemenis always avoid talking about it, because behind it is a big group of people running qat businesses and making millions,” said Dr. Hashim el-Zain, country director for the U.N.’s World Health Organization.

So far, there is little progress….

The plant is grown and used legally in Yemen, where its production is a major source of employment and income – particularly for powerful tribes with vast tracts of land.

For the benefit of Yassen who has been coming around and harassing me for months and apparently hasn’t figured this out yet.

IN terms of the format here and at most other blogs from the US, and I think internationally, in general,

If you see something indented in a box like this, it means I’m quoting someone else. Anything in a box is a quote from another person, and the symbol is called a block-quote.

If you see some words red, like this, it is the hyperlink to take you directly to the source of the quote.

From the Carnegie Endowment:

Even after the setback at the Forum for the Future in Bahrain, US officials were muted in their criticism of the rulers they finance. For the sake of stability in the region, the US is willing to pursue a dichotomous policy. It keeps on defining democratisation as its priority but refuses to condemn those that obstruct its democratisation agenda, namely the Muslim potentates Washington trusts with ensuring stability.

The US government repeatedly makes the mistake of defining as “moderate” those authoritarian Muslim rulers who fulfill America’s foreign policy goals. These strategic American allies are not the force for ideological moderation that would change the Muslim world’ s longer term direction. Authoritarian governments in the Muslim world do not want democracy as that would amount to the potentates giving up their power. It is the democratic movements opposed to governments in the Muslim world who are likely to be the real engines of social and political change in the Middle East and South Asia.

American officials must recognise the contradiction in their simultaneous support for democracy and dictatorial Muslim regimes. For example, Mali is the only Muslim country described by Freedom House as “free” based on its adherence to all criteria for freedom, democracy and respect for human rights. But Mali is not a major recipient of western aid whereas Egypt and Pakistan , characterised by Freedom House as “not free” or “partly free”, are.

While the governments drag their feet on reform, ordinary Muslims continue to take brave steps to prove that despite all odds civil society in the Muslim world has both vision and the potential to initiate real change.

Read the Rest.

No I haven’t been bought. This is the title of an op-ed in NewsYemen by Nabil al-Soufi, who from what I can tell is an independent thinker. And he makes the (valid) point that President Saleh did many important things during his rule. A primary achievement was to establish both the mechanics of democracy (although they are not functional now) and to encourage the broad based consensus for democracy among the Yemeni people.

Further, and I know this first hand, Yemen’s press was and perhaps still is the freest in the Middle East, providing a political space unavailable in other neighboring countries. The brutal and repressive atacks on Yemeni journalists now is an attempt to shrink that sphere of dialog.

The political party system is another positive legacy of the Saleh era, although the ability of some parties to consistently represent and articulate the concerns of the broader membership and society at large is hampered by concerns of self-interest and, in some cases, self-preservation. al-Soufi aptly describes the narrow scope and agenda of some of the parties:

Another achievement of President Saleh was without doubt, allowing the formation of political parties.

Nevertheless, partisanship remains an evil in our country because it retains a culture of marginalization of others. All parties fiercely defend their entities, their rights and their alliances only. Furthermore, political parties in Yemen have sadly not yet developed a culture or policy of service to others.

Coming back to our subject, Saleh, the President, was extremely liberal and open-minded in dealing with the idea of forming and managing political parties. The political community in Yemen also seemed ready to accept a reality with new political parties and demonstrated a unique ability in establishing legitimacy for political parties and their objectives.

Hence, there were very few obstacles that hindered change towards a multi-party system jam-packed with partisanship. This had indeed facilitated Saleh’s mission.

Another achievement of Saleh is unity, according to al-Soufi. Some scholars have described the policy of the central government toward the South not as a democratic partnership but rather as “annexationist” (internal colonialism).

al-Soufi says: Under Saleh’s rule, unity was not established on clashing ideologies, even if those ideologies had a unionist vision. Saleh was able to build a united country based on respect of the other side. Without Saleh’s vision of mutual respect, unity would not have been established unless one side wrecked the other. Again the vision of a government policy of mutual respect, like the visions of a policy of democracy and a free press, is a noble one that has yet to be translated into action by the regime.

The decade-long deployment of these concepts (democracy, a free press, multi party system, and unity) if only on an ideological level without their authentic or maximal physcial embodiment is what is driving the tide of rising expectations in Yemen and the popular demand for real reform. So for this Saleh deserves credit.

I’m glad this al-Soufi wrote this article because he is rational and unbiased and I can listen to him without twitching. He makes a valid point and provides both the broad context and a specific baseline to the turmultuous political scene in Yemen. So read the whole thing. Its a good article that covers more ground than what is summarized here.

Yemen’s Arms Race With No One (from Strategy Page)
November 28, 2005: No one really noticed, but Yemen has been buying more and more weapons over the last decade. In 2006, it plans to spend $885 million on the military. The big spurt came between 1998 and 2003, when defense spending tripled. Yemen is not awash with oil wealth, and only has a population of some 15 million. Yemen is the second poorest nation in the Arab world, but is number three in terms of the percentage of its income it spends on weapons.

You rarely hear about Yemen’s arms build up, except for the time a shipment of North Korean SCUD missiles was intercepted at sea. When it was found that the missiles were headed for Yemen, an American ally in the war on terror, the ship was allowed to go on its way. Yemen’s allies have tried to convince the Yemeni government to switch spending priorities. Yemen is at the bottom of the world ranking of what countries spend on things like education and health.

Why the arms build up down there? No one is sure, and the government just says it has to look after its national security. Part of the problem is unruly tribes along the Saudi Arabian border, factionalism within the country, Islamic terrorism, plus long standing border disputes with Saudi Arabia, and a belief, common among many Yemenis, that it’s not really fair that Saudi Arabia should have all that oil. For thousands of years, Yemen was the prosperous part of Arabia (because it’s the only part that gets any decent rainfall), while what is now Saudi Arabia was a howling wasteland. Yemenis have never had a comfortable relation with the desert nomads to the north, and the oil wealth up there has not improved matters.

Yemen is buying mostly Russian stuff (and has been for decades), or Chinese and North Korean copies. This is done partly because it’s easier for government officials to skim some of the money for themselves. The Russians and Chinese know how to speak corrupt.

Well Mr. Dunnigan (he’s an excellent anayst), some people think they might be reselling the arms purchased by the Yemeni military. Recently the Yemeni government promised to stop buying through brokers and reselling the “excess” to individuals and groups. Its been confirmed the Yemeni Air force has transported some weapons shipments. And of course, it is not reassuring that the weapons used by al-Qaeda in the attack on the US consulate in Saudi Arabia were traced by to the Yemeni military.

Also I have to find the link again but I think China is Yemen’s number one export partner with something like 46%, must be the oil.

Excerpt from Imperial Grunts, NYT.

The next person I saw as soon as I arrived in Yemen, again courtesy of Adolph, was Brig. Gen. Ali Muhsen Saleh al-Ahmer. Gen. Ali Muhsen, half brother to President Saleh (they shared the same mother), was said to be the second most powerful man in Yemen after Saleh himself. Ali Muhsen controlled an armored division that protected the capital. He had the reputation of being a buttoned-down, capable organizer, close to the fundamentalist Islah movement, as well as to gun-running sheikhs and perhaps to some in al-Qaeda, too. It was Ali Muhsen who helped Saleh get support from the radical “Afghan-Arabs” (Yemeni veterans of the Afghan war against the Soviets) when his regime was threatened by civil war in the mid-1990s. But American pressure following September 11, 2001, had been so severe that both Ali Muhsen and Saleh felt they had no choice but to accommodate President George W. Bush. The Americans made a deal with this former “bad guy”: giving Ali Muhsen’s regiment a chunk of the American military aid package was the only way that Washington could do business in Yemen. (Read on …)

This post bumped. This paper has been suspended for six months. The court obliged the pair to pay 50 thousand Yemeni rials each to the Public Treasure of the State and suspended them from work for an entire year. It also shut down the newspaper and banned its distribution for 6 months. The official reason relates to an article written about events in 1968, not this one below written about events today and the collusion by Yemeni military officals with al-Qaeda.

Original Post 11/23: From the Yemen Times local section, a translation of an article at

Attagammua, the Aden based news paper of the Unitary Congregation party:

According to the families of Yemeni suicide bombers killed in Iraq, they were trained in suicide bombings and had logistical support from top military commanders who are known for their association with the Jihad movement.

One family member reported that his brother (who later died in Iraq) recieved two weeks of training in Aden with the knowledge of security officials. From Aden and Abyan alone, nearly 100 fighters are thought to have gone to Iraq with 22 known to be killed. They were trained inAden, Abyan and Sanaa, the paper reported.

The paper cited an informed source that safe houses were established in Sana’a to house the fighters from other governates until their travel arrangements are finalized. An individual called “Ba Rahma” from Shabwa runs one of the safe houses in Sana’a. The source said that many of the Aden Abyan Army had joined Zarqawi’s group in Iraq.

And exactly how are the jihadiis procuring all those offical Yemeni travel documents?

Let’s not forget that Iraqi officials recently issued an interpol request that Yemeni officials extradite Saddam’s nephew who they claim is a mastermind of terrorism activities in the Northern section of Iraq, providing fighters, financing, ect. (Which ties into the statement by a regime official in a newspaper that al-Qaeda affiliated elements of the Yemeni military had established training camps in Yemen for fighters to go to Iraq.)

Also a leader of the Aden Abyan Army, Haidrah Abubakr, also known as Abulashaath, recently said “we know that we were imprisoned again only to be used against those opposing the regime.” Abulashaath said that the government had failed to deliver many of its promises given to Aden Abyan Army members based on a dialogue arranged by prominent Islamic scholar Hamud Al-Hitar.

Recently bin Laden’s bodyguard said that all they had to promise Hittar in the dialog was not to fight in Yemen, (so they go to Iraq and Chechnya). Lets also recall the State Department Patterns of Terrorism report noted that the Yemeni officials notifed the US that AAA leader Khalid Abd-al-Nabi was dead, but no. The Yemeni officials later admitted they let him go.

Hey, it worked in India with Ghandi and in the US with Dr. Marin Luther King, there’s no reason it can’t work in Yemen. Poland’s Solidarity movement had Lech Walensa who articulated the peoples demands to the people and the world, and unified the nation under one banner. But a lot of the dialog in Yemen is directed at the government, not the people.

(YT) Over six thousand teachers from the capital secretariat and the Sana’a governorate joined in the sit in along with members from the General Syndicate of the educational professions and syndicate of vocational and training education. The protesters also call for the amendment of the flaws of the entitlements of jobs in the new law….

Other governorates which also witnessed sits-in. Hadramot, Taiz, Dhamar each having at least 2000 protesters.

Good Article in the AP. This is the same guy that wrote the last good article in the AP.

Yemen Press Now Takes Repeated Beatings

By PAUL GARWOOD
The Associated Press

SAN’A, Yemen (AP) – The masked attackers pushed reporter Nabil Sabaie to the ground on a main thoroughfare, stabbing him in both arms and firing warning shots to keep onlookers away.

Yemeni journalists once were some of the Arab world’s freest. But recently they have faced a rash of mysterious beatings, arrests and other forms of intimidation as the government cracks down on the media ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

The campaign includes plans to introduce tougher press laws that leave the door open for reporters to be sentenced to death.

Yemeni officials complain that many of the country’s journalists are unprofessional and recklessly report on issues based on hearsay and rumor.

“The press have been writing anything they want,” said Social Affairs Minister Abdulkarim Al-Arhabi recently. “The arrests of journalists is not good at all and shouldn’t happen, but the press and the entire country is much better off if they reach a level of professionalism.”

But government critics say the crackdown is aimed at stopping critical reporting, including on the issue of whether President Ali Abdullah Saleh will honor his pledge to step down next year after 27 years in power.

Newspapers in recent months have stepped up reports on Yemen’s rampant corruption, identifying ministers and other officials allegedly involved in stealing state money. They also have increasingly scrutinized Saleh, his family and the country’s powerful military.

According to one local press watchdog, at least 100 journalists have faced various forms of harassment this year, ranging from beatings and arrests to kidnappings and a letter-bombing that wounded a newspaper editor who wrote about a tribal leader’s alleged private prison.

“There has been a 90 percent increase in various attacks against journalists this year compared to 2004,” said Mohammed Saada al-Odaimi, president of Yemen’s Center of Training and Press Freedoms Protection. He said the government reduced press freedoms “after being angered by the work of journalists.” (Read on …)

No I don’t think so. Im starting to think I put a hole in the net.

So I’m scanning through the Yemen Times’ translations of editorials in the local press and come across this from al-Mithaq, the major paper of Ali Saleh’s ruling party, the GPC.

So on the now infamous al-Jazeera show I said 25% of the Yemen’s buget is allocated to the military and there’s systematic weapons smuggling, there are also large quantities of diesel being smuggled, basic services (water, education, health care) are nearly non-existant, and bin Laden’s body guard released from prison said theres a deal with the government not to attack in Yemen, but outside Yemen is permissable. And there are al-Qaeda sympathizers in the military.

So this article says because the Foreign Minister invited me to Yemen, all the viewers would know what I said wasn’t true. This is their counter argument, a strong counter argument according to this article, come to Yemen and see for yourself.

Writer Yahya al-Nouri writes in comment on recent statements of Jane Novak screened by al-Jazeera satellite channel lately and talked on the Yemeni American relations. He says no doubt Ms Novak was victim of the false information that regretfully some have recruited themselves to supply her with. She has certainly affirmed ha she has completely departed from the simplest rules of impartiality, professionalism and transparency in commenting on the Yemeni political event. That situation made her to appear shaken. If that was the cause for her falling in that situation because of her little knowledge about the image of Yemen, the Yemeni foreign minister Dr AbuBakr al-Qirbi, who participated in part of the program of al-Jazeera, extended an invitation to Ms Novak to visit Yemen and see closely all data, changes and transformations that Yemen is witnessing. Thus, the Yemeni foreign minister has offered a correct example to rectify the state of wrong information that affected the views of Ms Novak. No doubt, this invitation has had its impression on observers who found out hat the invitation represents a strong argument and limitless confidence in the Yemeni discussion. Some observers have deemed that now the ball is in the court of Ms Novak to prove her credibility as researcher committed to the profession in dealing with the Yemeni affair.

And they’re still calling me a tool. And saying I get my information from the opposition not the IMF reports. Meanwhile I do not take well to *anyone* telling me what to do. It’s a character flaw but few things annoy me more.

Am I supposed to write this guy back regarding the invitiation? Maybe an open letter to the Foreign Minister, that might be fun but I don’t want to play their game. Its very funny though that they would apply the issue of transparency to me, when I have footnotes for everything, and not see the irony of the lack of transparency in the accounting of the public’s money. Do you know there’s several figures for Yemen’s foreign debt, depending on which set of books you use? But this whole thing is getting old fast. The issue is the election and the legal wranglings going on now to prevent an authentic expression of popular will, including this astounding crack down on the journalists which takes the form of both violence and judicial persecution.

Arab News: A Yemeni preacher convicted of murdering a top opposition politician in December 2002 was executed in Sanaa yesterday, prison officials said.

Ali Ahmad Jarallah, 28, was executed by firing squad at the central prison in the capital Sanaa, they told Arab News. “A police officer shot four fatal shots from a Kalashnikov rifle into Jarallah’s back,” one official said.

A Yemeni court sentenced Jarallah in September 2003 to death for shooting dead Jarallah Omar, the assistant secretary-general of the Yemeni Socialist Party. The sentence was upheld by an appeals court and President Ali Abdullah Saleh affirmed the verdict last week.

Jarallah, a prayer leader at a mosque in the city, shot Omar several times at close range during a congress for Al-Islah party in Sanaa on Dec. 28, 2002. He was arrested on the spot.

Jarallah told the primary court that he killed Omar because of his stance against the Shariah. “I killed a man who fought against God’s law,” he shouted after the verdict was announced on Sept. 14, 2003.

In a statement last week, the lawyer for the murder victim’s family objected to the sentence being carried out until further investigations were made into his accomplices. Amnesty International has objected to the narrow scope of the investigation saying a broader investigation should be carried out to exclude the possibility of collaboration with some leading figures. But now that the main perpetrator is dead, it will be a little more difficult.

NY: Al-Mikhlafi, who also heads the legal department of the YSP, Said the Supreme Court’s decision comes in agreement with the approach of the authorities, right from the moment of Omar’s assassination. “This was a move to hide the truth and conceal the real political motives behind the crime, which everyone knows is a political assassination. It is clear that this resembles a deliberate attempt to protect the organization that is behind this crime.” He added.

I was just digging around and found one more for the little brothers list.

AI, 2004: Fourteen-year-old Mohammad Sa’id al-Zaidi was allegedly subjected to psychological torture after he was detained by security officers outside his home in Sana’a on 5 August. He was held with adult prisoners in an underground location until his release on 2 September. Mohammad al-Zaidi was reportedly arrested to try and force his brother, Hassan al-Zaidi, to hand himself in to the authorities. Hassan al-Zaidi, a journalist with the Yemen Times newspaper, had written articles criticizing the government.

How sleezy, really the Yemeni people and any people deserve better than this: retribution by targeting the youngest in the family, intimidating others by showing the heartache available as punishment for writing (writing) about the government. A child in an underground prison for a month, because his brother is a journalist? This is a pattern. And it is deplorable.

Update on Ibrahim al-Saiani (14) rounded up during a raid targeting other family members, he is very ill and disabled, has been branded a terrorist, and is held without medical treatment. AI: The health of 14-year-old Ibrahim al-Saiani is reported to have deteriorated in custody: he has begun to lose his memory, his hands tremble and he is unable to speak clearly. He was physically incapacitated when arrested and is just withering away in jail.

More attacks on free speech:

(YT/NY) In one of the harshest court verdicts issued recently against the press, the Western Court of Sanaa sentenced yesterday the Al-Tajammu opposition newspaper to closure for six months, banned its Editor-in-Chief and one of its writers from writing for a year and fined them a total of YR 300,000 (about USD 1,500).

The newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Dr. Abdulrahman Abdullah Ibrahim and its writer Abdulraman Saeed protested the verdict, which journalists describe as ‘another indication of the oppression that the opposition press is exposed to’.

Related: (Article 19) The proposed media law drafted in response to concerns about freedom of expression in Yemen is an instrument of legal censorship, exclusion, intimidation, financial retribution, and harassment.

(YT/NY) The Joint Opposition Platform parties have revealed today their reform program initiative for ‘comprehensive national reform’ and said they could consider having one single candidate for presidency depending on the circumstances in the coming months….

The initiative recommended a number of radical reforms including constitutional amendments that would limit parliamentarians’ term to 4 years and the president’s term to 5 years and would limit his authority drastically.

It also called for transforming the regime to a parliamentary system where the parliament is the strongest and ultimate power, which could easily approve and dissolve governments and decide on critical issues.

The opposition called in its initiative to totally separate the three executive, judicial, and legislative branches and build a completely impendent judiciary that is based on qualifications and strong immunity that would prevent any side from manipulating it.

Furthermore, the initiative called for separating the army from the executive branch and giving it an independent entity under the joint supervision of the executive and legislative branches to ensure it remains out of any partisan influence.

The initiative focused on economic, political, and social reforms to eliminate all negative phenomena such as lack of law and order, corruption, mismanagement, poverty, oppression, illiteracy, and other problems.

Here’s another analysis at the Yemen Times>

Thats the title of the current issue of Yemen Episodes, The President and the Donkey.

1. It is confirmed that internal relations between the little dictator of Yemen and his leading supporter, Sheik Abdullah Al-Ahmar, have reached a point of no return. Sheik Al-Ahmar, realizing at last the seriousness of the ill-intentions of Ali Abdullah Saleh, has decided to distance himself from close coordination with Saleh and his men. Further, Al-Ahmar took a swift move to bridge the gap which isolated him from other tribal chiefs and leading figures of political opposition parties. In addition, reports from Yemen suggest that the economic and social impact of the war in Saada which caused huge destruction and took the lives of thousands from both sides, continues to represent a constant threat and challenge to the fate of the one man show government prevailing in Yemen.

2. Sheik Al-Ahmar is at present occupied to restore his influence on his tribe of Hashid and continues to make efforts to entice other tribes to rally behind him. To this effect, the arrogance of the self-centered dictator is providing the opposition groups unlimited opportunity to accelerate demands for a peaceful hand-over of power to a fully elected government. The public announcement made by President Saleh a short time ago, stating that he will not stand as a presidential candidate next year, is proper grounds for the opposition groups in Yemen to accelerate pressure within and outside Yemen to disqualify the dictator’s candidacy.

3. The regime is increasingly isolated in its domestic environment, surrounding regional states, its bilateral relations with international financial agencies, and leading democracies have equally worsened. Consequently, a change in the system of government in Yemen is not merely a ray of hope, but is becoming inevitable.

4. It is evident that the visit of the dictator to DC is a total failure.

Read the rest.

You know the attacks on me bother me not at all, but this editorial in the Yemen Observer gets me kind of annoyed.

Background: The Yemeni Journalist Syndicate is broken into two factions: the government weasels and the independent/opposition journalists. The head of the YSJ, Hafiz Bukari, resigned in protest of the lack of redress with regards to the multitude of attacks on non-governmental journalists within the past months (kidnapping, beating, stabbing, stealing their cell phones, stealing their computers, court appearences, being banned from writing, the list is so long).

So of course the Yemen Observer (Faris, the President’s media advisor) editorial (V8I36) is going to diss Hafiz: Things grew even worse when the syndicate’s Secretary-General threw his resignation into both the faces of his friends and opponents, as if to declare his failure to deliver what he had promised to the voters who had elected him. No, I don’t think it was his failure that was the problem here.

And then, as usual, blame outside influences: The majority of the conflicts within the YJS board came from outside the syndicate, especially when politicians volunteered to advise the young leaders. Soon however, that ‘advice’ turned to orders, accepted by the young members who were only too keen to improve their own position by boosting their connections to the parties. The young leaders would have been better off avoiding politics and party membership as the main incentive for their work. (That’s really funny coming from a government weasel like Faris, Saleh’s drone.)