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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen? by Jeremy Scahill
http://www.thenation.com/article/166757/why-president-obama-keeping-journalist-prison-yemenWhy Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?
Jeremy Scahill
On February 2, 2011, President Obama called Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two discussed counterterrorism cooperation and the battle against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At the end of the call, according to a White House read-out, Obama expressed concern over the release of a man named Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whom Obama said had been sentenced to five years in prison for his association with AQAP. It turned out that Shaye had not yet been released at the time of the call, but Saleh did have a pardon for him prepared and was ready to sign it. It would not have been unusual for the White House to express concern about Yemens allowing AQAP suspects to go free. Suspicious prison breaks of Islamist militants in Yemen had been a regular occurrence over the past decade, and Saleh has been known to exploit the threat of terrorism to leverage counterterrorism dollars from the United States. But this case was different. Abdulelah Haider Shaye is not an Islamist militant or an Al Qaeda operative. He is a journalist.
Unlike most journalists covering Al Qaeda, Shaye risked his life to travel to areas controlled by Al Qaeda and to interview its leaders. He also conducted several interviews with the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. Shaye did the last known interview with Awlaki just before it was revealed that Awlaki, a US citizen, was on a CIA/JSOC hit list. We were only exposed to Western media and Arab media funded by the West, which depicts only one image of Al Qaeda, recalls his best friend Kamal Sharaf, a well-known dissident Yemeni political cartoonist. But Abdulelah brought a different viewpoint.
Shaye had no reverence for Al Qaeda, but viewed the group as an important story, according to Sharaf. Shaye was able to get access to Al Qaeda figures in part due to his relationship, through marriage, to the radical Islamic cleric Abdul Majid al Zindani, the founder of Iman University and a US Treasury Departmentdesignated terrorist. While Sharaf acknowledged that Shaye used his connections to gain access to Al Qaeda, he adds that Shaye also boldly criticized Zindani and his supporters: He said the truth with no fear.
While Shaye, 35, had long been known as a brave, independent-minded journalist in Yemen, his collision course with the US government appears to have been set in December 2009. On December 17, the Yemeni government announced that it had conducted a series of strikes against an Al Qaeda training camp in the village of al Majala in Yemens southern Abyan province, killing a number of Al Qaeda militants. As the story spread across the world, Shaye traveled to al Majala. What he discovered were the remnants of Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs, neither of which are in the Yemeni militarys arsenal. He photographed the missile parts, some of them bearing the label Made in the USA, and distributed the photos to international media outlets. He revealed that among the victims of the strike were women, children and the elderly. To be exact, fourteen women and twenty-one children were killed. Whether anyone actually active in Al Qaeda was killed remains hotly contested. After conducting his own investigation, Shaye determined that it was a US strike. The Pentagon would not comment on the strike and the Yemeni government repeatedly denied US involvement. But Shaye was later vindicated when Wikileaks released a US diplomatic cable that featured Yemeni officials joking about how they lied to their own parliament about the US role, while President Saleh assured Gen. David Petraeus that his government would continue to lie and say the bombs are ours, not yours.
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http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/15/jeremy_scahill_why_is_president_obama
The Obama administration is facing scrutiny for its role in the imprisonment of a Yemeni journalist who exposed how the United States was behind a 2009 bombing in Yemen that killed 14 women and 21 children. In January 2011, a Yemeni state security court gave the journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a five-year jail sentence on terrorism-related charges following a disputed trial that was condemned by several human rights and press freedom groups. Within a month of Shayes sentencing, then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he was going to pardon the journalist. But Saleh changed his mind after a phone call from President Obama. Thirteen months later, Shaye remains behind bars. We speak to Mohamed Abdel Dayem of the Committee to Protect Journalists and award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill. "Abdulelah Haider Shaye [is] a brave journalist who just happened to be on the wrong side of history in the eyes of the U.S.," Scahill says. "His crime seems to be interviewing the wrong people and having the audacity to publish the other side of the story."
Filed under Yemen, Drone Attacks, Drones, Freedom of the Press, Obama, War on Terror, Human Rights
Guests:Jeremy Scahill, award-winning investigative journalist and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army." His latest piece for The Nation is called, "Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?"
Mohamed Abdel Dayem, coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Committee to Protect Journalists.
uponit7771
(90,336 posts)Enrique
(27,461 posts)here we go again, reporting on things our government is doing. What a drag!
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)I tried reading it and it still doesn't make any sense to me..??
G_j
(40,367 posts)surfdog
(624 posts)The article implies that a journalist could never coordinate with Al Qaeda
Doctors can but journalist can't that's what the article would have you believe
Total horseshit
eomer
(3,845 posts)They don't claim that a journalist could never coordinate with Al Qaeda, but rather that there's no evidence that this one did.
treestar
(82,383 posts)I mean I know he's good, but wow!
monmouth
(21,078 posts)answers or outrage they are looking for.
G_j
(40,367 posts)kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)Everyone just ignores it like junkmail, but it keeps coming anyway.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Everyone just ignores them like junkmail, but they keep coming anyway.
Sid
G_j
(40,367 posts)of anything? That is intellegtually dishonest. Suggestion (I know it's too much to ask, but): watch/read/listen to the interview from Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/15/jeremy_scahill_why_is_president_obama
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)So 35 people got vaporized in Yemen by our weapons. That should teach them a very good lesson about where they decide to live in the future. Well, their survivors, I mean. When the mighty and righteous American wehrmacht blows away a bunch of people, it's surely doing the work of the Almighty, and the angels rejoice over the bodies of the slain.
Anybody that says otherwise is just itching for a little stay at the Graybar Hotel. And if that person just happens to get shivved? Well, you can't blame us for that, can you?
G_j
(40,367 posts)this place is turning into a virtual wasteland for progressives and peace activists..
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)It's gettin' kinda lonely for folks who think the Constitution means something and isn't just a quaint old optional document.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)The snotty ingrate. Give him the Bradley Manning treatment and send out copies of the video to platinum supporters.
EFerrari
(163,986 posts)They went to all that trouble, his friends should just stfu.
Vattel
(9,289 posts)What is Obama thinking? Once again he demonstrates that he doesn't care about basic individual rights.
G_j
(40,367 posts)Some real nice bedfellows there..
Robb
(39,665 posts)girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)They all hired him or relied directly on his reporting.