Yemeni journalist imprisoned for defaming Islam
A Yemeni newspaper editor has begun serving a year in prison for reprinting the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
Kamal al-Aalafi, the editor, said the verdict “takes Yemen back to totalitarian rule, contradicts freedom of expression, and represents a real violation of democracy and freedom of the press,” he told reporters.
The court that handed down the sentence also ordered the closure for six months of al-Aalafi’s Al-Ra’i al-Am independent weekly and forbade the editor from writing for the same period.
Al-Aalafi was transferred to prison immediately after sentencing – to the shock of fellow journalists and human rights activists who attended the court session.
The cartoons were first published in a Danish paper in 2005. They were reprinted in European papers in January and February, provoking a wave of protests and riots in Arab and Muslim countries.
The defence team will appeal the sentence, defence lawyer Mohammed Alaw said.
At least 100 journalists in Yemen have faced various forms of harassment over the past year, ranging from beatings and arrests to kidnappings and a letter-bombing that wounded a newspaper editor, according to Yemen’s Centre of Training and Press Freedoms Protection, a non-governmental watchdog.
