Newsweek Interview with Yemeni editor imprisoned over Cartoons

Newsweek has an interesting interview with the Yemeni editor who was recently jailed over the publishing of the Danish cartoons which depicted the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.

Here's the intro to the interview published on Newsweek's website:

Mohammed al-Asaadi is an improbable martyr to a free press. As the editor in chief of the generally pro-government Yemen Observer, a weekly English-language newspaper published by Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh's media adviser, al-Asaadi has not been party to the sort of controversies that have seen many Yemeni journalists jailed in recent years. But when his newspaper ran an article about the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, Asaadi decided to reprint the cartoons—albeit with a large X censoring most of them, and an article denouncing them. On Feb. 11, he was arrested and charged with insulting the Prophet. He is now in jail in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, awaiting trial. NEWSWEEK arranged for a visitor to take a cell phone to him today, and NEWSWEEK's Rod Nordland interviewed him by phone.

Click here to read the interview.

--Tom Hayes