Journalist Heather Murdock Deported from Yemen after Debriefing on Southern Movement
Here’s another write up at the VOA. She got tired and confused after two days of interrogation and told Yemeni authorities more than she wanted. Apparently they also got her email passwords. Its such a thug regime.
By Heather Murdock SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
In San’a, we were questioned again, and I was asked to write all of the passwords to my e-mail accounts. Our equipment was inventoried out of Aden custody and into San’a custody. The chief who had been so angry three days earlier was jovial and friendly, and rushed to get rid of our belongings. But as he left, I sunk. We were not being freed. We were being transferred to a higher security prison.
Maybe an hour later, as we sat on the floor of a stone room inventorying our things yet again against an Arabic checklist with the help of two friendly armed soldiers, embassy officials appeared. I heard an American voice say, “Thank you for letting us take them.” We were given our passports, keys, money and clothing. And then we left. In the car, the embassy officials told us we had a few days to gather our things and to get out of Yemen.
A few days later, I was on a plane to New York, having said goodbye to only some of my friends. I had reported from Yemen for 11 months without incident and was surprised to be exiled with such gusto. Our pictures are now part of an airport database: If we try to return, we will be arrested.
After I left the country, I called the separatists but could not get through. I wanted to know if the government had used my confidential information against them, so I sent one man an e-mail.
In typical separatist fashion, he held our detention up as yet another way he views the south as oppressed. “You should know that they are always doing this [to] us, even for nothing,” he wrote. “Please write for the American people what happened [to you] in our country.”
