ADEN, 14 December 2006 — A Yemeni court yesterday sentenced two journalists to a suspended four-month jail term and banned them from writing for one month for reprinting cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), court sources said.
Akram Sabra, editor in chief of the Al-Hurya weekly and Yahya Al-Abed, a senior editor at the paper, were found guilty of denigrating Islam and defaming the Prophet by republishing the drawings, first published by a Danish newspaper in September last year.
The Sanaa court also suspended the newspaper for one month.
The journalists said they republished the caricatures to show how insulting they were.
“We will appeal the verdict despite it being the most lenient handed out in this case, but we will appeal the guilty conviction,” lawyer Khaled Al-Ansi told reporters.
Last week, a Yemeni court convicted editor in chief of the Yemen Observer weekly Mohammed Al-Asadi of “inappropriately” reprinting the controversial cartoons and fined him 500,000 riyals ($2,500).
On Nov. 25, a Sanaa court found Kamal Al-Olufi, editor in chief of the Al-Rai Al-Aam newspaper, guilty of republishing the cartoons and sentenced him to one year in prison and imposed a six-month ban on his weekly newspaper.
The three papers were brought before the court in mid-February and charged with “publishing blasphemous drawings offending the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and Islamic religion.” Yemeni press and publications law prohibits the dissemination of any material seen as offending religions.
