SANAA, 7 December 2006 — A Yemeni court yesterday convicted a journalist of reprinting controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and fined him 500,000 riyals (about $2,500).
The court said the editor in chief of the Yemen Observer weekly Muhammad Al-Asadi “inappropriately” handled the drawings, first published by the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper in September last year.
Presiding judge Sahl Muhammad Sahel Hamza delivered the 32-page ruling in a session attended by journalists, rights activists and lawyers. However, he ruled that the editor had not carried out “a blasphemous act.”
Al-Asadi told reporters shortly after the verdict was announced that “this is a wrong verdict.” He said his lawyers would lodge an appeal against the conviction.
On Nov. 25, a Sanaa court sentenced an editor to one year in prison and imposed a six-month ban on his weekly newspaper for reprinting the cartoons.
Kamal Al-Olufi, editor in chief of the Al-Rai Al-Aam newspaper, was found guilty of publishing blasphemous material.
The two editors, along with the chief editor of the Al-Hurya weekly, Akram Sabra, had been brought before the court in mid- February and charged with “publishing blasphemous drawings offending the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Islamic religion.”
The drawings triggered protests throughout Islamic countries.
Yemeni press and publications law prohibits the dissemination of any material seen as offending religions.
