Yemen court sentences 12 Shiites to jail, one to death (Roundup)

Jun 9, 2008, 16:53 GMT

Sana'a - A Yemeni court on Monday sentenced 12 Shiites, including a prominent opposition journalist, to up to 10 years in prison and another to death for plotting attacks in support of rebels fighting army forces in northern Yemen.

The court sentenced the main defendant, Ja'afar al-Merhebi, to death for killing two police officers when they raided his house in the capital Sana'a last year.

Four men received 10-year jail terms and two were sentenced to eight years. Six others, including a woman, were sentenced to jail terms varying from one to six years.

Another woman was acquitted of the charge of providing shelter for al-Merhebi.

As presiding judge Muhssein Alwan delivered the verdicts, the defendants shouted: 'Death to America, death to Israel, curse on Jews and victory to Islam.'

The slogan is the trademark of the rebel Shiite group Believing Youth, whose armed members have been fighting government forces in the northern province of Saada since mid-2004.

Among those convicted was Abdul-Kareem al-Khaiwani, former editor of the Shura opposition weekly, who received a six-year jail sentence. He was convicted of disseminating pro-rebel propaganda to local and foreign media.

When the trial began in July 2007, prosecutors said the defendants had been involved in a conspiracy to blow up vital government and military buildings in Sana'a, and prepared remote-controlled explosive devices to carry out the attacks.

They also said the suspects had planned to poison the water reservoirs of police and military posts.

Police arrested al-Khaiwani in June last year over suspected links to a 'terrorist cell' connected to Believing Youth.

'This is a political trial, and this court is for conviction and knows no acquittal,' said al-Khaiwani, an outspoken critic of government policy, who also lodged an appeal against the verdict.

Later on Monday, al-Khaiwani was taken to the central prison in Sana'a to serve the jail term.

Yemen's Journalists Syndicate (YJS) and Writers Union condemned the sentence, saying it went 'against the constitutional and legal guarantees related to freedom of expression and freedom of the press.'

The Washington-based American Islamic Congress (AIC) also condemned the jail sentence against al-Khaiwani.

'We call on Yemen's president to correct this mistake and pardon al-Khaiwani,' AIC's Civil Rights Outreach Director, Nasser Weddady, said in a statement, adding that the verdict 'is really an attack on Yemen's free press and independent journalists.'

Sporadic but fierce clashes between the Shiite rebels and the army have left hundreds of soldiers and insurgents dead since the fighting erupted after Shiite rebel leader Hussein Badruddin al-Houthi first established the group in mid-2004. Hussein was killed by the army in September 2004.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh vowed last month to impose law and order in the north-western province of Saada, a remote mountainous region on the border with Saudi Arabia, 230 kilometres north of Sana'a.

Authorities accuse the rebels of trying to reinstall the rule of imams that was toppled by a republican revolution in northern Yemen in 1962. Qatari mediators failed last month to revive a fragile Qatari-brokered ceasefire inked in Doha last June.