Human rights organisation Alkarama hosted a one-day symposium in London focusing on human rights and arbitrary detention in Saudi Arabia.

Alkarama is pleased to announce that the NGO response to the Dublin Statement on the Process of Strengthening the UN human rights treaty body system has been adopted by a group of 20 international non-governmental human rights organisations, including Alkarama.

Background to the statement

Youssef Kayed

Alkarama has learned of the forced return of Mr Youssef Kayed from Bulgaria to Lebanon last Saturday, 27 November 2010, where he risks torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the Lebanese authorities.

Alkarama fears that Mr Al Swaid risks being heavily sentenced on the basis of a dossier containing confessions extracted under duress and through severe torture.

Families of prisoners held in Saudi Arabian prisons without charge or trial gathered outside Saudi embassies across Europe and the Middle East today, protesting long-standing and continuing abuses of human rights.

On 26 November 2010 Alkarama addressed the Special Rapporteur on Torture requesting his intervention with the Moroccan authorities for instigate an investigation into the incident.

Abdul Aziz Al-Shammari, 37 and a Kuwaiti citizen married with two children, is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee. He was repatriated to Kuwait on 3 November 2005, after which he was put on trial, acquitted by the Kuwaiti Criminal Court, and released in 2006.

On 4 November 2010 Alkarama sent his case to the Working group on enforced and involuntary disappearances (WGEID), requesting its urgent intervention with the Algerian authorities.

Rachid Kebli, 30, is a manual worker from Wilaya de Tlemcen. He was disappeared by four plain clothed intelligence officers, as he was working on a construction-site in Maghnia, Wilaya de Tlemcen at 11:00am on 18 October 2010.

In March 2002 he was arrested in Pakistan, handed over to the American authorities, who then transferred him to the Moroccan authorities. After one year of secret detention he was released without charge. On his way back to Italy from Morocco, he was once again arrested - this time sentenced to 15 years on the basis of confessions extracted under torture.