Houthis condemn four journalists to death on charges of spreading false news
A Houthi state security court on Saturday sentenced four journalists to death and six others to prison, all on charges of espionage and "collaborating with the enemy" for spreading "false news" in favour of the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which is fighting the rebel militia in the civil war raging in Yemen, said defence lawyer Abdel Majeed Sabra.
Abdel Majeed Sabra announced in an official statement that Abdel Khaleq Amran, Akram al-Walidi, Hareth Hamid and Tawfiq al-Mansouri, aged between 29 and 35, had been sentenced to death.
The six other defendants, aged between 27 and 41, are to be "monitored by the police for three years", according to the court's ruling, which was read behind closed doors without the presence of the defence or the media.
Of these ten journalists, nine were arrested in a raid on a hotel in Sana'a in June 2015, and the tenth was arrested at his home in the Yemeni capital in August of the same year.
Yemen, the poorest nation in the Arab world, has been rocked by civil war since 2014, when the Houthis took control of the north of the country, including Sana'a, with the aim of overthrowing the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi. After the rebellion of the Houthi militia, which is supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, an alliance led by Saudi Arabia (representative of the Sunni branch of Islam and a great enemy of the Persian country) was formed to confront it on the ground.
In this war framework, the ten information professionals involved were retained, whose trial began last December without prior notice and who were prosecuted on the basis of the Penal Code instead of the Media Law, as denounced by the lawyer at the time.
The convicted men were charged with "retransmitting false news, information, rumours and propaganda in support of Saudi Arabia's aggression and its allies with the intention of weakening the nation's defence forces". They are also accused of "undermining the spirit of the people, harming public security and spreading terror among the people" by their actions, according to the text of the indictment, which further explains that the journalists were operating "in secret" from various points in the capital through social networking accounts and websites.
Last year, Amnesty International described the charges as "false". The organization said the detained reporters were beaten, deprived of water and forced to hold cement blocks for several hours.
