Ambassador to lobby for Yemeni prisoners al-Mo’ayad, Zayed in America

Sheik Muhammed Ali al-Mo’ayad

Arrangements are being conducted in Washington, D.C. for a meeting between the Yemeni Ambassador to the United States, Abdel-Wahab al-Hajjri, and U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey in the coming days, said lawyer and human rights activist Khalid al-Ansi, executive manager of the National Organization for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms (HOOD).

Al-Ansi said that the meeting between al-Hajjri and Mukasey will cover the detention of Yemeni nationals Sheikh Muhammad Ali al-Mo’ayad and Mohammed Zayed, and discuss details of providing health care for them.

Al-Mo’ayad and his partner Zayed are incarcerated in the ADX Florence maximum-security prison, also known as the ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies’, in the state of Colorado after the Court of Brooklyn served them combined prison sentences of  75 years. ADX Florence is what is known as a ‘control unit’ prison for inmates that are deemed to require the strictest conditions of imprisonment, separating them from both prison workers and other inmates for safety and security. Al-Mo’ayad and Zayed were also fined two million dollars for financing terrorism.

Al-Ansi said that al-Mo’ayad and Zayed suffer from very poor prison conditions. He also expected the New York Court of Appeals to issue its judgment on their cases in the coming days, which is many months overdue.

Muhammed Zayed

The American authorities strengthened their actions against al-Mo’ayad and Zayed early last February, when the Department of Prisons moved them to a mental asylum. 

Shiekh al-Mo’ayad notified his family by telephone of a significant deterioration in his health condition, saying he is tired and in extremely critical condition due to chronic and serious diseases resulting from poor care at the prison hospital.  

He stressed that he and his partner Zayed receive very poor treatment from the prison administration, who do not respect the basic human dignities of the prisoners, and do not care for his health and advanced age, paying no heed to international conventions on prisoners’ rights.

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