Death Penalty Sought for Yemen Editor

Lawyers for a cleric have urged a judge in Yemen to condemn to death a local editor who published the Danish caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, the newspaper’s website reported Thursday.

Mohammed Al-Asadi, editor of the Yemen Observer, says he is being prosecuted by both the state and a prominent Islamic cleric, Sheik Abdulmajid Zindani, whom the United States has accused of supporting terrorism.

Editors of two other Yemeni papers that published the cartoons, Al Rai al Aam and Al Hurriya, have also been charged with offending Islam. Their trials have not yet started.

It appeared unlikely that a court would hand down executions in any of the cases. Yemen, a poor country at the foot of the Arabian Peninsula, has a secular, U.S.-allied government that controls the judiciary.

But the case highlights once again the extent of the sensitivities over the cartoons throughout the Muslim world -- even when, as in this case, they are displayed in a critical context.

The Yemen Observer published thumbnail copies of some of the cartoons in February. But it covered them with a thick black cross to show its disapproval and in two accompanying articles, condemned the images.

When Al-Asadi appeared in court Wednesday, 21 lawyers for Zindani demanded the death penalty. They said Muhammad had approved of the killing of a woman who had insulted him, the Yemen Observer reported.