No pressure on jailed Kiwi journalist

Kiwi journalist Glen Johnson. Photo / Supplied

The parents of the Kiwi journalist held captive in a Middle Eastern jail for the past 12 days won't be asking him to rethink his career when he is released.

Officials from the Yemen Embassy in Washington, US, announced on Friday that they would deport Glen Johnson, a freelancer who was working on a story about people smuggling when he was arrested for being in southern Yemen illegally.

Though his King Country-based parents, Mike and Lin Johnson, didn't know yesterday when he would be released, or where he would be deported to, the news was a relief.

"It's a huge weight off our shoulders," Mike Johnson said. "We're so relieved something is happening but we're also cautious, he's not on the plane yet."

New Zealand Embassy officials in Saudi Arabia had been working with their British and Canadian counterparts in Yemen to effect Johnson's release.

But as he is in a particularly remote and strife-torn part of the country - which is in the middle of an uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh - no consular staff had been able to get to Johnson and ascertain his condition.

"They're going on the assumption that because he's a westerner he'll not be mistreated," Mike Johnson said.

His release could come as early as tomorrow or Tuesday, but that was best case scenario.

He could be deported from Yemen to the country he was last in - which is understood to be the African country of Djibouti, which borders Ethiopia, 100km away over the Strait of Aden.

It is believed Johnson went on a boat trip with people smugglers, or followed them.

He would be taken to immigration officials in one of the bigger cities in Yemen before being ejected.

Mike Johnson said he hoped his son would return to New Zealand, but they would not pressure him.

"We will ask: 'Are you coming home'? We're not going to tell him to come home. I think he'll want to continue to be a freelancer and continue working in the Middle East.

"We presume this has made an impact on his life. We don't want him going to places where there is excessive risk."

They would be happy if he returned to the Middle East, or Africa, but would urge him to keep out of hotspots, such as Somalia or Syria currently.

They had not seen him since he left to start his writing career nearly 2 years ago. They had been saving up to meet him in somewhere like Egypt or Turkey.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman yesterday had no further details on when Johnson's release might happen but said they were "pretty happy with how things are moving".

Johnson, trained at Canterbury University, had been commissioned to write for UK magazines, but had also done some work for the Herald on Sunday.

Editor Bryce Johns this week provided Mfat staff with a letter, at their request, backing Johnson's credentials.

Amnesty International on Thursday called on the Yemenis to disclose where he was being held and give him access to a lawyer.

The announcement of his pending release came a day later.