Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye, who United States President Barack Obama had been keeping in prison, has been released.<\/p>\n
Shaye was apparently\u00a0given a presidential pardon<\/a>that requires him to remain in Sanaa for two years. This means he would be prohibited from traveling to many of the areas where US drone strikes have taken place while he was in prison or where they will take place over the next two years.<\/p>\n Journalist Iona Craig, a\u00a0Times of London<\/em>correspondent in Yemen who had covered Shaye\u2019s case for two years, reacted, \u201cDelighted to say, after two years of covering his case, jailed journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye is free. I can\u2019t quite believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n Craig acknowledged that Yemen President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi\u00a0deserved credit<\/a>\u00a0for keeping his word and releasing Shaye. She also\u00a0praised the organization<\/a>, Index on Censorship, in the United Kingdom for calling attention to \u201cShaye\u2019s long-running story\u201d and the threat his imprisonment posed to freedom of expression.<\/p>\n Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni youth activist and writer who testified before Congress this year on the impact of US drone operations in his country,reacted<\/a>, \u201cAfter FOUR years of jailing him by order from Barack Obama, Yemeni government releases journalist Abdulelah Shaea.\u201d He also said, \u201cOnly Barack Obama can compete with Yemen\u2019s dictators (throughout history) in jailing journalists and killing civilians in Yemen,\u201d and, \u201cWhat a great Iftar Shaea\u2019s kids might be having today; having their father back with them after 4 years in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n The story of Shaye is told in detail by Jeremy Scahill in his book,\u00a0Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield<\/em>. Shaye went to the site of a US cruise missile attack in al Majalah where at least 21 children and 14 women were killed. He also tracked down US-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to interview him on how he could support the US Army medical officer Nidal Hasan, who went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood and why he believed Umar Farouk Abdulumutallab, the Christmas Day underwear bomber, was justified to have targeted a \u201ccivilian airliner.\u201d<\/p>\n His reporting made him a target the United States wanted to neutralize. According to his lawyer, Abdulrahman Barman, whom I\u00a0interviewed<\/a>\u00a0in May 2012:<\/p>\n [Shaye] is one of those who got all of the information quickly and put it out there for the public. His work actually impacted the Yemeni government and US government in ways where they didn\u2019t want to see it. The Yemeni intelligence were trying to actually recruit Shaye and have him work in the intelligence but he refused. So, after the attack on al-Majalah where so many civilians including women and children were murdered, Abdulelah was beaten up and kidnapped [in June 2010] by the national security agency and he was asked to shut up and be silent and not to talk about these kind of issues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This did not stop Shaye from practicing journalism.<\/p>\n After he was abducted in July 2010 by Yemeni intelligence agents and went on television to share what had happened to him, US government officials, according to Scahill, began \u201cprivately telling major US media outlets that were working with Shaye that they should discontinue their relationships with him. The government alleged he was \u201cusing his paychecks to support al Qaeda.\u201d<\/p>\n In August 2010, Barman told\u00a0Firedoglake<\/em>\u00a0Shaye was kidnapped by national security agency people. He was beaten and dragged to \u201cnational security cars.\u201d He was held for thirty-five days incommunicado while activists protested his detention in front of intelligence services and judicial system buildings. These agencies claimed they had not detained him, but he discovered his location through a released prisoner, who had seen him one of the cells. This led to the national security agencies transferring him to another location.<\/p>\n Barman eventually was able to be with him during interrogation and he said there was no evidence against him for the terrorism-related charges he faced.<\/p>\n Shaye was held in solitary confinement for a period, denied access to his lawyer, and subjected to psychological torture and abuse and appeared in a cage before a special tribunal on September 22, 2010. The judge read the charges he faced, which included \u201cbeing the \u2018media man\u2019 for al Qaeda, recruiting new operatives for the group and providing al Qaeda with photos of Yemeni bases and foreign embassies for potential targeting.<\/p>\n According to Scahill, when Shaye heard the charges, he reacted, \u201cWhen they hid murderers of children and women in Abyan, when I revealed the locations and camps of nomads and civilians in Abyan, Shabwah and Arhab when they were going to be hit by cruise missiles, it was on that day they decided to arrest me\u2026You notice in the court how they have turned all of my journalistic contributions into accusations. All of my journalist constributions and quotations to international reporters and news channels have been turned into accusations.\u201d And, as he was dragged off by security, he shouted, \u201cYemen, this is a place where, when a young journalist becomes successful, he is viewed with suspicion.\u201d<\/p>\n In January 2011, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison and two years of house arrest in his hometown.<\/p>\n Shaye went on hunger strike in November 2011 and support for his release increased. Yemeni activists protested in front of the US embassy and, finally, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen at the time, was willing to release him. But he received a phone call from President Obama who opposed his release.<\/p>\n In May of this year, Craig\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that Hadi had confirmed there was \u201can order from the president to release\u201d Shaye \u201csoon.\u201d However, no details were given on when he would be released.<\/p>\n Craig recounted how the US Ambassador to Sanaa, Gerald Feierstein, had told her, \u201cHaidar Shaye is in jail because he was facilitating al-Qaeda and its planning for attacks on Americans and therefore we have a very direct interest in his case and his imprisonment,\u201d despite the fact that no evidence confirming this allegation had ever been presented.<\/p>\n She highlighted the effect of his imprisonment on Yemeni journalists:<\/p>\n Yemeni journalists have repeatedly expressed their lingering fear over America\u2019s meddling in Shaye\u2019s case. Many became afraid to report on air strikes. One Yemeni journalist, like Shaye a specialist on al-Qaeda, renamed himself an \u201canalyst of Islamic groups\u201d and refused to do TV interviews especially with Al Jazeera after what happened to Shaye.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It had been said by Scahill that Shaye was \u201crotting away losing his mind in a Yemeni prison.\u201d<\/p>\n What effect his imprisonment will have on him as he resumes life obviously remains to be seen, but one hopes he has not lost his spirit and commitment to journalism and, despite restrictions on traveling outside of Sanaa, will eventually return to doing what he was doing before he was unjustly imprisoned at the behest of the Obama administration.<\/p>\n It takes courage to do what Shaye was doing before he was imprisoned in Yemen. Sadly, when he wound up in prison, US media outlets virtually abandoned him. He had contributed to outlets such as theWashington Post<\/em>\u00a0and ABC News but they apparently did not ever find it appropriate to raise their voices to get answers from the administration on why a journalist was being kept in prison.<\/p>\n In solidarity, it is good to see Shaye be freed. Obama owes Shaye an apology and reparations of some kind for depriving him of the years of his life that he spent in prison and could not be with his family or out in the field doing journalism. Unfortunately, as much as the administration\u00a0may claim to support press freedom<\/a>, it is pretty much a certainty that there will not be a peep from the Obama administration where they acknowledge it was wrong to keep Shaye jailed.<\/p>\n