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International and Local Groups Condemn Rise in Intimidation of Human Rights Defenders

The Lebanese authorities should immediately cease harassment of Saadeddine Shatila, of the international human rights group Alkarama, for his work documenting torture by security forces, a group of eleven international and local groups said at a news conference today. The groups also criticized an emerging pattern of intimidation against human rights defenders who raise concerns about security agencies.

28 June 2011, 3:30 a.m. Salem Mohamed's home in the Abu Slim district of Tripoli is quiet when suddenly twenty security agents violently break down the front door. They are all heavily armed, some are wearing hoods others are in civilian clothing. The 31-year-old academic, father to two children, is immediately handcuffed and taken by force in a military car to an unknown destination.
Alkarama today submitted the cases of 7 journalists, including 2 women, who have suffered persecution because of their activities reporting on, and participating in, protests in Yemen to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. These journalists have been subjected to various type of harassment including being enforcedly disappeared, detained arbitrarily, arrested, and received death threats.

Mr.

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Mr Awad Jassem Al Abbas ((عواد جاسم العباس, is aged 36 years and married with four children. He usually lives with his family in Al Dmaier, Reef Damascus, Syria.
Mr Ammar was arrested on 28 May 2011 from his home in Banias at 3pm by Military Security agent Issam Sayouh, who has previously worked alongside Mr Ammar's father in a refinery in Banias as a security agent for two years until the demonstration began.

Mr Ammar had already been arrested by Military Security when the army first entered the city at the beginning of the protests on 7 May 2011, but was released two days later.

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Alkarama is seriously concerned about the repression of peaceful demonstrators and other activists who are often victims of enforced disappearance following their arrest by the Syrian security services.

Saadeddine Shatila, Alkarama's representative in Lebanon, was held yesterday morning, 25 July 2011, for questioning by Lebanese military intelligence in Beirut. According to the summons which he received last Friday, he was questioned regarding certain "security issues", but was released later the same day after seven hours of interrogation, which mainly concerned his human rights work.

Arrested for the first time in July 2009 as he was travelling to Pakistan with Tablighi Jamaat, a religious organization for which he volunteered, Mr Mohammed Hajib was again arrested in Morocco last year and remains detained in inhumane conditions to date.
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