JEDDAH, 25 June 2007 — Just two weeks after participating in a judiciary and freedom of the press conference in Kuwait, well-known Yemeni journalist and former editor in chief of the country’s Al-Shoura newspaper, Abdul Karim Al-Khiwani, was forcibly detained last Wednesday by Yemeni national security forces.
According to reports in the state-run media, Al-Khiwani was arrested for being a secret member of what has been called the third terror cell of Hussain Al-Houthi, the rebel cleric involved in clashes with the Yemeni Army in Saada.
“They told me I was arrested because of CDs about the Saada war,” he told Arab News from his cell in Sanaa.
The CDs were found in his house following his arrest on Wednesday when he was dragged to the police station still in his pajamas. “They slapped my seven-year-old daughter while searching the house so hard that she fainted,” said Al-Khiwani.
He said the CDs he had are no secret and that most journalists in Yemen have them. They do not contain terrorist information. They only provide information about the conditions of civilians in Saada and the number of civilians who have died there.
“I learned after being investigated at the police center that my arrest is not legal,” said Al-Khiwani. He said that he should have received a subpoena ordering him to come to the police station. “Instead what happened was more like a kidnapping,” he explained.
Al-Khiwani thinks that this arrest, his second, is a kind of payback by the Yemeni government. He was arrested for seven months in 2004 for alleged support of the rebel movement in Saada.
Al-Khiwani explained in Kuwait and also from his cell that he feels many problems come from his writing in the media about the Yemeni president’s attempts to ensure that his son will inherit the office.
