Al-Jazeera prosecutions called illegal

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SANAA, Yemen, May 17 (UPI) -- The Committee to Protect Journalists accused the Yemen Press and Publication Court of illegally prosecuting two al-Jazeera journalists arrested last year.

In a written statement addressed to the government, the committee also demanded the Cabinet "refrain from reviving a restrictive audio-visual and electronic media bill that has been pending in Parliament since 2010."

Al-Jazeera reporters Ahmed al-Shalafi and Hamdi al-Bukari were arrested while covering the uprising in Yemen last year and accused by then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh of "operating outside the bounds of the law," official reports say.

"The court's revival of a politicized case from the Saleh era sends a clear message to all journalists in Yemen that nothing has changed for the press. As if hauling journalists in front of an extraordinary tribunal on trumped up charges were not enough, the authorities are now also reviving a media law that was so restrictive, it could not even pass during Saleh's near-absolute grip on power," Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the committee's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said in his statement.