Free At Last! Yemeni Reporter Who Exposed U.S. Missile Strike Goes Home After 3 Years in Jail

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KAMAL SHARAF: [translated] He was so interested in revealing the truth, to reveal the American exploitation of al-Qaeda to occupy some Islamic countries culturally and economically. What is al-Qaeda? Who supports it? Why is it in a war with America? These questions were raised by all. All of us wanted to know what is going on. We were only exposed to Western media and Arab media funded by the West, which depicts only one image of al-Qaeda. We haven’t heard other viewpoints. But Abdulelah brought a different viewpoint.

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, Amnesty International responded to Abdulelah Haider Shaye’s release by calling on the Yemeni and U.S. governments to investigate whether he was arbitrarily imprisoned based on his work as a journalist, as well as an independent review of the 2009 attack he helped expose.

For more, we’re joined by two people who have closely followed Shaye’s case. Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, who is the producer and writer of the new film, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, also author of the new book by the same title, he is the national security correspondent for The Nation magazine. We’re also joined in Washington, D.C., by Rooj Alwazir. She’s a Yemeni-American activist who co-founded the Support Yemen media collective based in Sana’a, Yemen. She helped campaign for Abdulelah Haider Shaye’s release and is currently working on a documentary on drone wars.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Rooj Alwazir, were you surprised by the news of Shaye’s release this week? And can you talk about its significance?

ROOJ ALWAZIR: Most definitely. We were expecting something to happen. President Hadi had come out in May, and he had a meeting with U.N. representatives and told them that he promises that Shaye will be coming out sometime before Ramadan, which is sometime before July. But speaking to many of the lawyers that had been working on the case, they’ve kind of—we’ve heard the rhetoric many, many times before, and President Hadi hasn’t really followed up on the timeline that he usually says. So, when we heard the news two days ago, it was a great surprise to many of us, and it was a great, exciting surprise.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about the White House’s response to the release of Shaye. Jeremy Scahill contacted the National Security Council for a response. This is what the National Security Council spokesperson, Bernadette Meehan wrote. She wrote, quote, "We are concerned and disappointed by the early release of Abd-Ilah-Shai, who was sentenced by a Yemeni court to five years in prison for his involvement with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." Jeremy Scahill, talk about what they have said.

JEREMY SCAHILL: First of all, we should—we should let that statement set in. The White House is saying that they are disappointed and concerned that a Yemeni journalist has been released from a Yemeni prison. The White House is citing his conviction, that he supposedly was a supporter of al-Qaeda, in a kangaroo court, a court that was condemned by every major international media freedom organization, every major international human rights organization, that it was a total sham trial, where he was kept in a cage during the course of his prosecution and was convicted on trumped-up charges. So, Mr. Constitutional Law Professor President is saying that this Yemeni court, that has been condemned by every international human rights organization in the world, is somehow legitimate.

Secondly, when I’ve asked the White House and the State Department for a shred of evidence that Abdulelah Haider Shaye was guilty of anything other than journalism, critical journalism, they won’t provide it. They just say what they often do: "State secrets. Trust us."