US accused of Yemen proxy detention

When Sharif Mobley, an American citizen living in Yemen, went to the shops on the morning of January 26 this year, his family had no idea that it was the start of a chain of events that would lead to him being accused of murder and facing potential execution. As he drank tea on a Sana'a street, eight masked men burst from two white vans and tried to grab him. Terrified, he ran, but was brought crashing to the ground by two bullets to his legs and bundled into one of the vans. The method of abduction may have been brutal, but it was not the work of a rebel group or criminal gang. Instead, the armed men were Yemeni security agents, and in a set of legal documents seen by Al Jazeera, Mobley's lawyers allege they were operating on behalf of the US government. The documents, part of a freedom of information request submitted by Mobley's legal team to US authorities, paint a disturbing picture of shadowy security cooperation between the US and Yemen in the wake of an alleged attempt by an al-Qaeda group based in the country to blow up an airliner over Detriot in December last year. Mobley's story, his lawyers say, is an example of a more disturbing development in the relationship between the US and Yemen; the proxy detention of an American citizen by the Yemeni government, arranged and overseen by US agents in the country.