Armed attack on independent daily's office in Sanaa

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about an armed attack on 12 February on the office of the independent daily Al-Ayyam and the home of the editor and his family, which share the same compound in Sanaa. Police later arrested four of the newspaper's employees, one of whom had exchanged shots with the assailants, killing one of them. “It is essential that the Yemeni authorities carry out an investigation to establish the circumstances of this attack, in which it would seem that an unscrupulous real estate developer's harassment of the past few months escalated to an unprecedented level. The authorities have a duty to protect the newspaper and its staff.” The attack on the newspaper's compound was carried out by a dozen gunmen who had been sent to evict its occupants. The newspaper's security guard fired back, killing one of them and wounding two others. Editor Hisham Bashraheel said he had received many threatening phone calls in recent months from people claiming to own the land where the newspaper has had its office for the past 30 years. Thamam Bashraheel, one of Al-Ayyam's journalists, told Reporters Without Borders that he thought that the harassment of the newspaper was an “indirect way of making it shut up.” He also criticised the time taken by the police to arrive after their help was requested. The police arrested three member's of the newspaper's staff - Arhab Hassan Yassin, Hisham Bin Taleb and Mohammed Awad - and the security guard, Ahmed Omer Al-Abadi. Created in 1958, Al-Ayyam has no political affiliation and is one of Yemen's leading dailies. Despite having an editorial office in Sanaa, its headquarters is in Aden, 358 km south of the capital, and it acts as a mouthpiece of the inhabitants of the southern provinces. In recent months it has extensively covered the social unrest in the country's poorest regions. Reporters Without Borders issued its annual report on press freedom around the world (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=25484) on 13 February. Click here (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=25443) to read the chapter on Yemen.