Yemen Jails Journalist Over Blasphemous Cartoons
Khaled Al-Mahdi, Arab News
SANAA, 26 November 2006 — A Yemeni court yesterday sentenced an editor to one year in prison and imposed a six-month ban on his weekly newspaper for reprinting controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Kamal Al-Olufi, editor in chief of the Al-Rai Al-Aam newspaper was found guilty of publishing blasphemous material.
The drawings, first published by the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper in September last year, were seen in the Muslim world as blasphemously depicting the prophet and triggered protests throughout the Muslim world.
Olufi was taken to jail shortly after the verdict was pronounced.
He and editors of English-language Yemen Observer and the Arabic-language Al-Hurya weeklies had originally been brought before the court in mid-February and charged with “publishing blasphemous drawings offending the Prophet and Islamic religion.”
Yemeni law prohibits the dissemination of any material seen as offending religions.
Meanwhile, 13 men reportedly having links to Al-Qaeda terrorist activities have escaped from a prison in northwestern Yemen, it was reported yesterday.
The report by the Ray News website said the 13 were suspected members of Al-Qaeda and that they escaped from a jail in the Haja province, some 130 kilometers northeast of Sanaa. “Some of the escapees held Arab nationalities,” said the report.
Interior Ministry officials confirmed the reported escape, but they told Arab News that the jail breakers were not detained over terror-related charges. Five had been recaptured over the past two days, they added.
The officials said investigations were under way to find out how the detainees managed to escape. The men had been extradited by Saudi authorities after they infiltrated Saudi territory seeking jobs.
It was the second jailbreak in Yemen this year after 23 Al-Qaeda operatives escaped from an intelligence jail in Sanaa on Feb. 3.
The men tunneled their way out of the high-security intelligence prison. The mass escape embarrassed the Yemeni government and dealt a major blow to its efforts to pursue supporters of Al-Qaeda.
Among the February escapees were 13 convicts in the 2000 bombing of the US destroyer USS Cole in the southern Yemeni port of Aden and the bombing of the French oil tanker.
Nine of the escapees have been recaptured or gave themselves up to the authorities, including six convicted in the oil tanker attack.
On Sept. 15, two of the February jail breakers were among four suicide bombers who carried out attacks at two oil facilities in eastern Yemen, according to officials.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=89184&d=26&m=11&y=2006
Thanks, TK.