SANAA, 25 March 2005 — Yemeni journalist Abdul Karim Al-Khaiwani, who received a presidential pardon after serving part of a prison sentence for harshly criticizing the regime, was released from jail yesterday, his family said.
“Abdul Karim has left the prison and he is headed for home,” a member of his family said, a day after Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh pardoned Khaiwani.
Khaiwani’s discharge was in line with “release procedures ordered on Thursday morning by the public prosecutor” in Sanaa, he said.
The surprise presidential pardon came one day after the head of an appeals court rejected a request to suspend the one-year sentence handed down to Khaiwani after he was convicted of inciting violence, defaming Saleh and publishing false news.
Khaiwani, who had been in jail since early September, is editor of the opposition weekly Al-Shura, which was ordered to suspend publication for six months. The period has elapsed but the weekly has yet to resume publication.
It has been replaced by another weekly, Sawt Al-Shura.
Khaiwani’s case is linked to an armed rebellion waged by a radical Zaidi preacher, Sheikh Hussein Badr Eddin Al-Huthi, in northwest Yemen last year.
The Yemeni government announced on Sept. 10, 2004 that the army had killed Huthi, nearly three months after he started the rebellion in the mountainous northwest, triggering clashes which left more than 400 people dead.
Khaiwani, himself a member of the Zaidi sect, a moderate Shiite Muslim group dominant in northwest Yemen but in the minority in the mainly Sunni country, defended Huthi throughout the conflict and was bitterly critical of the government’s handling of the rebellion.
