Fourth hearing in detained reporter’s trial before state security court

When the fourth hearing in imprisoned journalist Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae’s trial was held before a special state security court in Sanaa today, prosecutors submitted the contents of his computer as evidence but his lawyer accused them of deception, pointing out that they had produced the computer seized when he was briefly arrested on 11 July, not the one seized when he was arrested a second time on 16 August. The prosecution also failed to explain the legal grounds of Shae’s arrest when it presented its evidence and arguments against the journalist, who is accused of belonging to a rebel group, promoting its interests and inciting the murder of the president and his son. The next hearing has been set for 28 November. Shae again refused to attend today’s hearing because he disputes the court’s legality and because he says those responsible for his 11 July arrest and his detention since 16 August – which he regards as “forced disappearance” – are the ones who should be on trial. According to the information available, it seems that Shae is being held in solitary confinement in an underground cell in a detention centre operated by the intelligence services (http://en.rsf.org/yemen-preposterous-charges-arbitrary-26-10-2010,38661.html). A string of other press freedom violations has meanwhile come to the attention of Reporters Without Borders in recent weeks. In the most recent case, the authorities in Aden province confiscated 5,000 copies of the previous day’s issue of the newspaper Al-Qadiya Al-Mostaqila on 12 November, without offering any legal grounds or explanation. Arafat Madabash, a correspondent for the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat and editor of the Al-Taghyir Net website, received a threatening phone call on 10 November from the parliamentarian of Ibb and most influent man in the region, Sheikh Mohamed Bin Naji Al-Shayef, who said he would cut his tongue out and drag him through the streets for reporting in Asharq Al-Awsat that there was tension within the Bakil, the tribal confederation to which he belongs. The Bakil and the Hashid are Yemen’s two biggest trial federations. Abu Bakr Badhib, the editor of the opposition newspaper Al-Thawra, and Fathi Abu Al-Nasr, one of his reporters, were questioned by the prosecutor of the special court for press offences on 8 November as a result of a complaint by Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed Mansour from Ibb province, over an article about displaced persons. On 7 November, soldiers manning a checkpoint at Nehm, to the northeast of the capital, confiscated the recordings that journalists had made at a conference organised by the Bakil confederation in Al-Jawf province. The correspondents of News Yemen, the Al-Masdar Online website and the satellite TV station Suhayl were briefly detained. Ghamdan Abu Ali, the correspondent of the Marib Press website, and Fouad Al-Oussaji, another journalist, were summoned before a court in Al-Hudaydah province on 25 October as a result of a complaint by a housing company which thought its reputation had been damaged by an article they wrote. Aziz As-Saloui, Al-Taghyir’s correspondent in Taez province, was insulted and attacked by local public health official Abdelhalim Al-Ariqi on 25 October when he went to ask about alleged irregularities in the hiring of employees following a complaint by an unsuccessful candidate.