Khalid Salman Seeks Amnesty in the UK
Editor Khalid Salman was hauled into court 13 times last year and most recently banned from working as an editor and fined a substantial sum. Some of the articles the YSP’s newspaper, al-Thoury, publishes are just a little too true and detailed.
Contrast this with the deferential treatment of the government stooge running the 26th September, newspaper of the Defense Ministry, who is still crying because Hamid yelled at him, and the Ministry of Justice advanced a formal request to lift Hamid’s parliamentary immunity in order to prosecute him on some bogus charges.
Yahoo news: Yemeni opposition newspaper editor Khaled Ibrahim Salman has sought political asylum in Britain, where he was attending an aid conference, an exiled opposition group has said.
“The Yemeni regime has deliberately violated the rights and freedoms of individuals and the press and emptied democracy of its content,” Salman, who edits the Ath-Thawri paper, was quoted as saying by the London-based Southern Democratic Assembly on Sunday.
“Which is why I’ve decided to withdraw from the delegation accompanying President Ali Abdullah Saleh and to seek political asylum in Great Britain,” it said. Salman was accompanying Saleh to London last week for an international donors conference for the poorest country on the Arabian peninsula, during which 4.7 billion dollars was pledged. Ath-Thawri is the journal of the opposition Yemeni Socialist Party, of which Salman is also a member of the central committee.
There was no immediate official Yemeni reaction to Salman’s move. Saleh, who has been in power for 28 years, won another term in office in September, although that poll was marked by freer criticism of the regime than previous votes.
Of course the regime has started trashing Salman:
almotamar.net – SANAA-Yemeni journalists have expressed their resentment towards the behaviour of the Al-Thawri YSP weekly newspaper’s editor in chief Khalid Salman by his seeking political asylum in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Mr. Salman was a member of the media delegation that accompanied the president of the republic to the recently held London donor conference.
Chairman of the Yemeni Journalist Syndicate said he was feeling sorry for what the journalist Khalid Salman did, describing it as an irresponsible and condemned behaviour. Meanwhile editor in chief of al-Wahdawi newspaper said it was an extremely unjustifiable act. YJS chairman Nassr Taha Mustafa told almotamar.net that colleague Khalid Salman has initiated was not expected and he did not think it as unbecoming for the profession of press he has taken as career and practice for long years and that he knows well he could say what he wants without being exposed to any harm. Mar Mustafa has also called on Mar Salman to reconsider his stance and to retract from it.
