White House Stands by Obama Push for Yemeni Journalist to Remain Behind Bars

(WASHINGTON) -- White House officials defended President Obama’s request that Yemen's government keep a local journalist detained for alleged terrorist ties on Friday.

Al-Sha’i had investigated a series of airstrikes in December 2009 against what Yemeni officials described as an al Qaeda training camp in al Majala, finding what he assessed to be remnants of U.S. ordnance -- Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs -- and reporting that among the victims of the strikes were 21 children and 14 women. The journalist also interviewed terrorist cleric Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen who was in killed by a U.S. Predator drone in September 2011. His December 2009 interview with Awlaki for Al Jazeera publicly established the cleric’s praise of the Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Hasan.

In January 2011, Al-Sha’i was convicted in a Yemeni court of terrorism-related charges and sentenced to five years in prison, but he was reportedly in line to receive a pardon. In February 2011, however, President Obama spoke on the phone with then-Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and, according to a White House read-out of the call, “expressed concern over the release of Abd-Ilah al-Shai, who had been sentenced to five years in prison for his association with AQAP,” al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

On Thursday, ABC News asked White House press secretary Jay Carney about Abd al-Ilah Haydar al-Sha’i, a Yemeni journalist whose case was recently covered by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation. Carney said he didn’t have any information, but would get back to ABC News -- a White House official did so Friday.

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