Sana’a: The Yemeni journalist Abdul Elah Haidar Shea was released on Monday, 10 hours after security forces kidnapped him from a Sana’a street because of statements he made about Al Qaida.
Shea said the gunmen who took him from Hadda street on Sunday evening, identified themselves as security workers. “They told me the statements I give to the media are damaging the interests of the homeland,” he told Gulf News immediately after he was released.
The men took him blind-folded to a place where they interrogated him for more than six hours. “I think the place was the Political Security or National Security offices, and they asked how I met Al Qaida people and where I get the my information from,” said Shea who has in the past conducted exclusive interviews with the two leaders of Al Qaida - Nasser Al Wahayshi and Anwar Al Awlaki.
He told how the men told him to be careful about the ‘Red Lines’. “’We hope you now understood the message and the red lines’ they told me before I was released,” he said. “My lab top is still with them.”
The journalist was not subjected to torture while being investigated, but he said one of the men punched him in the nose when he tried to pray.
Shea has not ruled out the possibility that his kidnapping had something to do with his internet statement of last Sunday, in which the Yemen-based Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed responsibility for an attack on intelligence headquarters on June 19 in which 11 people were killed.
