Yemeni journalist Naseh Shaker was last heard from on November 19, 2023, when he spoke to his mother around 5:30 a.m. from the southern city of Aden. He had traveled there overnight from his home in the capital, Sanaa, to catch a flight to Lebanon, where he was scheduled to attend a security training course on November 21, according to his brother, Abdullah Ahmad Shaker, who spoke to CPJ, and multiple news reports.
Shaker did not catch his flight out of Aden or respond to any subsequent calls or messages from his family, and his mobile phone was switched off, the journalist’s brother told CPJ.
Local advocacy group Yemeni Journalists Syndicate issued a statement on September 9, 2025, reporting Shaker was detained by the United Arab Emirates-backed Security Belt Forces (SBF).
The SBF was founded in 2016 and are a group of paramilitary units operating in southern Yemen. Although formally a function of the Ministry of the Interior, the SBF is reported to operate under the command of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), one of three groups that control part of Yemen, which has been mired in civil war since 2015.
Nabil Alosaidi of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, a local advocacy group, told CPJ he believed that Shaker had been arrested by the Southern Transitional Council (STC), one of three groups that control part of Yemen, which has been mired in civil war since 2015. He did not provide any further details.
The Samir Kassir Foundation, a Beirut-based press freedom group which organized the training that Shaker was due to attend, and the London-based Rory Peck Trust, which supports freelance journalists, also told CPJ they believed that Shaker was being held in a prison run by the STC, a United Arab Emirates-backed secessionist group that aims to establish an independent state in southern Yemen.
Shaker is a renowned freelance journalist and a regular contributor to Al-Jazeera English, the London-based news website Middle East Eye, and the U.S.-Congress-funded Voice of America.
CPJ emailed the STC for comment but did not receive an immediate response.