A US citizen living in Yemen, by the name of Sharif Mobley, was sitting at a sidewalk cafe one day, sipping tea. Eight masked men with guns popped out of nearby vans and attempted to abduct him. Understandably terrified, Mobley ran away. The men shot him in the legs, then seized him and bundled him into a van.
So far you're not surprised, right? The problem is that the men who attacked Mobley were apparently Yemeni government security agents, acting at the behest of the USA.
Mobley's problems all started when he decided that Yemen was getting too dangerous, and he wanted to go home to the USA. Reasonably enough, he and his wife went to the US embassy, and asked about paperwork. At the embassy, however, they were subjected to a lengthy interrogation about what they'd been doing in Yemen. Well, OK, this is not entirely unreasonable. Unpleasant and unfortunate, yes; totally unreasonable, no.
But then Mobley was shot, and seized off the street. While in hospital, he was allegedly interrogated by agents of the US government, and then beaten by his Yemeni guards when he refused to answer the Americans' questions.
The next night, his house was raided by armed men. When his wife went to the US Embassy the next day, frantic with worry about her missing husband, she saw the leader of the men who'd raided her house the night before, walking through the Embassy with a security pass around his neck.
Now, we have no evidence that Mobley is guilty of anything, yet most of us would agree that the circumstances are a bit suspicious. But even if Mobley is guilty as original sin, this sort of treatment of a US citizen is grossly unacceptable.
Full story at Al Jazeera English
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