Salah Al Saqladi, a journalist and human rights defender, has been detained since July 2009, and allegedly beaten and tortured in prison; Mohamed Al Maqaleh, editor of the website Al Eshteraki, was kidnapped in September 2009 by Yemeni security forces and has been held incommunicado since; Fouad Rashed, editor of Al-Mukalla Press, was arrested in May 2009 and has been detained without trial for six months.

In October 2009, a special press tribunal sentenced Mounir al-Marawi, a contributor to the independent weekly Al-Masdar, to two years in prison and Samir Jibrane, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, to a one-year suspended sentence for libelling the president. The sentence followed a refusal by the state-run Al-Thawra Printing House to print one October issue of the newspaper that it deemed to be critical of the authorities.

WAN-IFRA is concerned that the recurrent censorship, prosecution and arrests are intended to silence journalists who are critical towards the government, notably in its conduct of the war against a Shi’ite rebellion in the north of the country and for perpetuating violations of human rights, particularly in southern Yemen.

WAN-IFRA reminds the Yemeni government that imprisoning journalists for writing and publishing critical comments constitutes a clear breach of the right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by numerous international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 of the Declaration states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, regardless of frontiers."

The Board of WAN-IFRA calls on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to immediately release from prison and overturn jail sentences handed out to journalists in Yemen and to take all necessary steps to ensure full respect of international standards of freedom of expression.