Egypt ? Attorneys for a cleric have urged a judge in Yemen to condemn to death a local editor who published the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, the newspaper’s Web site said Thursday.

The editor of the Yemen Observer, Mohammed Al-Asadi, told The Associated Press he is being prosecuted by the state and a prominent Islamic cleric, Sheik Abdulmajid al-Zindani, whom the United States has accused of supporting terrorism.

Editors of two other Yemeni papers that published the cartoons, Al-Ra’i al-Am and Al-Huriya, also have been charged with offending Islam. Their trials have not yet started.

It appeared unlikely that a court would hand down executions in any of these cases. Yemen, a poor, lawless, Arab country at the foot of the Arabian Peninsula, has a secular, U.S.-allied government that controls the judiciary.