YemenWatch: Thursday October 28, 2010

An American of Somali descent has been charged with murder.  He was originally arrested because of ties to al-Qa'eda, but while in the hospital he tried to escape and killed a guard.

A Yemeni journalist is on trial for being a "media adviser" to AQAP.  In 2009 he did an interview with Anwar Al-Awlaki for Al-Jazeera, and his specialty as a reporter is terrorism and AQAP.  Reporters Without Borders has ranked Yemen as #170 out of 178 countries, for freedom of the press.

In good news, new judges are being trained in judging cybercrimes:

Of the 150 being trained, the top ten will receive special legal training abroad, according to Al-Wazeer.

The training program is part of the five-year Yemen Justice and Policing Program, funded by UK aid from the Department of International Development (DFID), which is currently in its second year.

There's a temporary cease-fire for a tribal battle southeast of Sana'a.  These two tribes have been fighting for decades, but 6 people have been killed since Friday when the Bani Dhabyan sheikh was killed.

A Swedish engineer and his driver were just kidnapped in southern Yemen.  Luckily, it appears to be tribal and not AQAP.

Yahoo! has a really good article on the overall situation in Yemen, and the problems for President Saleh.  To me, it sounds almost like the American Wild West.