SANAA: Yemen’s president said yesterday he had pardoned an opposition journalist facing a six-year jail sentence for links to armed rebels.
A Yemeni court last year convicted Abdelkarim Al-Khaywani, editor of opposition newspaper Al-Shura, to six years in jail after he was found carrying images and statements of the rebels.
Khaywani’s conviction drew protests from journalist groups and he received an award from human rights organization Amnesty International. Yemeni authorities had earlier suspended the sentence, which is now quashed by the pardon.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced the pardon in a speech to a journalist union’s conference, in which he also called for new legislation to allow private television and radio stations and easing rules for the launch of new publications.
Battles with rebels, which had raged on and off since 2004 in the north of the country, subsided last year. Hundreds of people have been killed in the conflict and thousands have fled their homes.
