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Saudi Arabia is unfortunately well-known for its widespread use of arbitrary detention, as Alkarama has denounced on numerous occasions.

Hachemi Boukhalfa was arrested arbitrarily on 9 January 2011 by the agents of the DRS and throughout a week was submitted to grave torture before being released. To this day, the Algerian judicial system has not taken up his case and he has been obliged to turn to UN authorities.

The 40-year-old lives in Ouargla where he sells cars.

Currently detained at Tora prison, he continues to suffer ill-treatment and is denied medical care for his wound.

Mr Hazimi was initially arrested in 2001 and remained in jail for 3 months. He was later arrested in 2002 where he was moved between many Saudi prisons before he ended up in the Zahban prison in Jeddah where he stayed, until he was released nine years later, without being charged and without any legal proceedings against him.

The specialised criminal court in Riyadh issued a verdict on Sunday 19 February 2012 to release the reformer and political opponent Dr Said bin Zair after a detention that lasted more than four years.

Dr Bin Zair, Laureate of the 2011 Alkarama Award and a well known persona

Mr Omar Abdelmohsen Al Qaid, a 24-year-old Saudi national, was arrested on 28 November 2010 and remains in detention since then without legal proceedings. He is therefore arbitrarily deprived of his liberty and Alkarama informed the UN Special Procedures of his case today.

- Abd al-Ilah Haidar Shaie, the Yemeni journalist detained in the Political Security detention center in the capital Sanaa since August 2010, is suffering a rapid deterioration in his health conditions due to his indefinite hunger strike undertaken.

The journalist's family informed Alkarama's representative in Yemen that Mr Shaie undertook a

Minors Mohamed Kamal and Ahmed Othman were released on 16 December 2011, several weeks after the United Nations Working Group adopted Opinion No. 57/2011 finding their detention arbitrary and requesting the Egyptian authorities release them immediately. It also called on the Egyptian government to provide them with reparation for their arbitrary, or illegal, detention