Yemeni court jails and censors journalists for defaming president

Oct 31, 2009, 12:24 GMT

Sana'a, Yemen - A Yemeni court gave a newspaper editor and a writer jail sentences and banned them from writing on Saturday after it convicted them of slandering the country's president.

Judge Mansour Shaya'a, who presides over the newly-established Press Court, sentenced editor-in-chief of the weekly al-Masdar newspaper to a suspended one-year jail term and banned him from writing for one year.

The second journalist, Munir al-Mawri, was sentenced to two-year jail term and banned from writing for life. Al-Mawri, who was sentenced in absentia, lives now in the United State.

They were convicted of defaming and slandering the president Ali Abdullah Saleh by publishing an article written by al-Mawri in May describing Saleh as a 'weapon of mass destruction.'

The article questioned Saleh's ability to lead the country out of the political turmoil and accused him of protecting the corrupt officials.

'I am dismayed by this weird ruling,' Jubran told the German Press Agency dpa after the ruling was delivered.

'What we published is a criticism of the president's performance, and does not touch his personal life,' he said.

Under the Yemeni press and publications law, the publisher of a newspaper holds the same responsibility of the writer of a defamatory article.