The Yemeni dissident journalist Abd al-Karim al-Khaiwani has been freed. Jane Novak of Armies of Liberation was at the forefront of freeing the man. She led an online effort to pressure the government in Yemen, wrote articles published in Middle East Newspapers, and was the impetus behind the Journalists Without Borders campaign.

Score one more for the Pajamahidin! Al Jazeera:

Yemeni President Ali Abd Allah Salih has pardoned journalist Abd al-Karim al-Khaiwani who was put behind bars for criticising his regime.

Salih told a government-named dialogue commission that he was pardoning al-Khaiwani, whose one-year jail sentence was upheld by an appeals court on Tuesday, a member of the committee said, requesting anonymity.....

Al-Khaiwani, who has been in jail since early September, is editor of the opposition weekly Al-Shura, which was ordered to suspend publication for six months. The period has elapsed, but the weekly has yet to resume publication....

Al-Khaiwani's case is linked to an armed struggle waged by a Zaidi preacher, Shaikh Husain Badr al-Din al-Huthi, in northwest Yemen last year....

Al-Khaiwani, himself a member of the Zaidi sect, a moderate Shia Muslim group dominant in the northwest but in the minority in the mainly Sunni country, defended al-Huthi throughout the conflict and was bitterly critical of the government's handling of the rebellion.

He went so far as to lash out at the family of the Yemeni president.

Posted by: Rusty at 12:01 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 240 words, total size 2 kb.