By Cliff Montgomery – July 29th, 2013
A Yemeni journalist whom the Obama Administration lobbied to keep behind bars recently was released fromjail by the country’s president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
The reporter – Abdulelah Haider Shaye – today is a free man despite the best attempts of U.S. PresidentBarack Obama, who had personally lobbied to keep him in prison.
Shaye was tried in Yemen and given a “five-year prison term for associating with al Qaida in the ArabianPeninsula,” according to McClatchy news service – but his condemnation and sentence was the result of “atrial that international human rights groups [have] described as a sham,” added the news venue.
It’s quite possible that Mr. Shaye is simply guilty of being an ace reporter, and telling the truth about theObama Administration’s controversial ‘drone war’.
We’ll let McClatchy news service describe the essential facts of the matter.
“Shaye’s ability to gain access to high-ranking, deeply reclusive al Qaida-linked figures earned him internationalattention, allowing him to report for a number of Western news outlets,” stated McClatchy news service in arecent article.
“But he earned the ire of U.S. and Yemeni authorities” after filing a report which “revealed that a December2009 bombing in the village of Majalla” – located in the Yemeni province of Abyan – “was an American cruise-missile attack that killed dozens of civilians, including 14 women and 21 children,” rather than an “airstrike[from Yemeni military forces] on an al Qaida training camp, as originally claimed,” stated the news service.
“After those reports, he was arrested in 2010 and held for more than a month without seeing an attorney,”McClatchy pointed out.
“A Yemeni court found Shaye guilty in 2011 of assisting al Qaida, and sentenced him to five years in jail,”added the news service.
The detention of Shaye brought harsh condemnations from a number of press freedom groups. One examplemay be seen in a statement released last August by the human rights organization Amnesty International,which declared Shaye’s prison term to be “arbitrary” and further prompted that “the conviction be set asideand [that] he should be released.”
In early 2011, Yemen’s then-president – Ali Abdullah Saleh – appeared to be moved by the declarations comingfrom the various press freedom and human rights groups. Saleh was considering a quick pardon of thereporter, according to news reports.
That’s when the Yemeni leader received a phone call from U.S. President Barack Obama.
“President Obama expressed concern over the release of Abd-Ilah al-Shai, who had been sentenced to fiveyears in prison for his association with AQAP,” declared a White House statement released on Feb. 2nd, 2011- which for unknown reasons employed an alternate, more ‘foreign’ description of Shaye’s name.
That seems a cruel irony, as it comes from the administration of a man who himself is named Barack HusseinObama…
Regardless, the phone call from the American president worked – Shaye was not pardoned in 2011, andcontinued to languish in prison.
But human rights and press freedom groups continued their pressure. At a May 6th get-together with UnitedNations officials, the current Yemeni president declared to journalists that he now planned to ensure Shaye’squick release.
Yemeni President Hadi’s officials have admitted that the reporter’s release from jail was delayed after theyreceived objections from U.S. officials.
Shaye now is free, but must remain in the city of Sanaa – the capital of Yemen – for two years. It is a conditionof the journalist’s release.
Regardless, many in Yemen – especially local press freedom groups and fellow journalists – are quite happy tosee Shaye’s release from prison.
Shaye’s release “is a victory for common values of media freedom, justice and human rights,” declared theFreedom Foundation, a press freedom group based in Sanaa.
“Especially since President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi ordered the release of Shaye despite all the Americanpressures on him to keep him in prison,” added the Freedom Foundation statement.
