Abdul Ilah Haydar Shayi’ (Photo Credit: Jeremy Scahill on Twitter @jeremyscahill).

After close to three years in detention and following international and domestic pressure, on July 23, investigative journalist Abdul Ilah Haydar Shayi’ has been set free.

Shayi’ was featured in the recent documentary Dirty Wars, a powerful film co-written and co-produced by Jeremy Scahill, about the U.S. government’s “global war” paradigm used to side-line international human rights law from U.S. counter-terrorism efforts around the world.

Abdul was targeted by both the Yemeni and American governments for telling the truth. He was the first Yemeni journalist to allege U.S. involvement in the missile attack on the community of al-Ma’jalah.

Yemen’s government initially said its forces had acted alone in the attack on al-Ma’jalah – which killed 41 local residents, including 21 children and 14 women. But shortly afterwards, American media outlets published statements by anonymous U.S. government sources claiming President Obama approved the use of U.S. missiles being fired at two alleged al-Qa’ida sites in Yemen.

In June 2010, Amnesty International released images of a U.S.-manufactured Tomahawk cruise missile that carried cluster sub-munitions, apparently taken near al-Ma’jalah after the December 2009 airstrike. The organization further claimed that such missiles were only known to be held by the U.S. forces at that time and that Yemeni armed forces were unlikely to be capable of using such a missile.

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