Middle East News
Yemeni journalist claims abduction by intelligence agents
Jul 12, 2010, 17:18 GMT
Sana'a, Yemen - A Yemeni journalist said he was freed early on Monday after a brief abduction and interrogation in the capital Sana'a by agents of the state intelligence services.
Abdul-Elah Haidar Shaia'a said armed men snatched him at gun point from a Sana'a street late Sunday and took him on a pick-up vehicle to a basement of a building belonged to the Political Security Organisation (intelligence).
He told local news outlets that he was interrogated for hours while he was handcuffed and blindfolded.
'I was interrogated for six hours about comments I made to newspapers and international media on al-Qaeda organisation and its activities in Yemen,' Shaia'a told the News Yemen website.
He said he was released at dawn and that security agents dropped him on a main street in the city.
Shaia'a, a freelance journalist and analyst specialized on al-Qaeda and Islamist groups, has recently published interviews with local leaders of al-Qaeda.
Among the figures he interviewed this year was Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim cleric in Yemen who has been connected to a failed Christmas airline bombing in Detroit and killings at Fort Hood, Texas.
Al-Awlaki was earlier this year put on a list of suspected terrorists whom the CIA is authorized to kill, according to US media reports. He has already been on a target list kept by the military and he eluded at least one strike by Yemeni forces who had assistance from the US to target a gathering of al-Qaeda suspects.
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