(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to President Ali Abdallah Saleh, RSF protested the “lifetime ban on Jamal Amer, a journalist with ‘Al Wahdawi'”. RSF asked the president to “do everything possible to quash this sentence”. To the best of the organisation’s knowledge, it is the first time that a journalist in Yemen has received such […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to President Ali Abdallah Saleh, RSF protested the “lifetime ban on Jamal Amer, a journalist with ‘Al Wahdawi'”. RSF asked the president to “do everything possible to quash this sentence”. To the best of the organisation’s knowledge, it is the first time that a journalist in Yemen has received such a harsh sentence, which is furthermore deemed unconstitutional by the Union of Yemenite Journalists’ president. Finally, RSF, which “considers this sentence to be totally disproportionate to the violation which the journalist has been accused of”, recalled that “in 1999, three journalists were imprisoned in the country. A fourth is currently imprisoned and has been detained since December 1997”.
According to information collected by RSF, the incriminating article, published in the opposition weekly “Al Wahdawi” in August 1999, dealt with relations between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The court of first instance considered the article to be “a threat to relations between Yemen and Saudi Arabia”. Amer received a lifetime ban from practicing journalism and a 5,000 rial fine (approx. US$31, 40 Euros). His newspaper also received a one-month suspension.
