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On September 10, 2017, shortly after leading the evening prayer, Imam Abdulrazaq Moftah Ali Mshireb was abducted in front of his house in Tripoli. A group of uniformed men belonging to the RADA Security Forces arrested him in front of his son, without showing a warrant or explaining the reasons behind the arrest.

Mshireb and his son were beaten by the RADA forces, who confiscated the victim’s mobile phone before threatening him with a weapon in order to force him to do as they asked and follow them to an unknown location.

Despite the official denial of human rights violations by Egyptian authorities, abuses committed by the security forces continue unabated in the country. Alkarama has documented three new cases of enforced disappearances that occurred in the Beheira Governorate between April and October 2017 following abductions by State Security Forces and the police.

Between October and November 2017, Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly submitted seven more cases of enforced disappearances in Iraq – all of which took place in Baghdad and its surrounding areas in 2014 – to the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED).

On October 25, 2017, Alkarama expressed concern over the ongoing clampdown on peaceful dissent in Saudi Arabia while bringing several cases of arbitrary arrests to the attention of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression (SR FREEDEX), David Kaye.

On October 23, 2017, Omani journalist Yousuf Al Balouchi – known under the pen name of Yousuf Al Haj – was released from the Central Prison in Muscat after being detained for one year as a result of an article denouncing corruption at the Supreme Court level. Just weeks before his release, Al Zaman newspaper, where Al Haj was working at the time of his arrest, was permanently shut down by the authorities following a long legal dispute.

On October 23, 2017, Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly requested the urgent intervention of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) in the case of an Iraqi soldier who disappeared following his 2014 arrest, and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown to date.

On October 17, 2017, Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly sent an urgent appeal to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) regarding the case of a 34-year-old taxi driver who has been missing since his abduction by American forces in Iraq in September 2008.

On October 18, 2017, Alkarama and Urnammu for Justice and Human Rights sent an urgent appeal to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) regarding the case of Ruba Bakkar and her two young children, all of whom remain missing following their arrests by Syrian government forces in 2013.

Six years after their abductions by the Sudanese National Security and Intelligence Services (NISS), politicians Musa Ali Ahmed Abdeen and Malek Abdallah Abdulgadir both remain disappeared to date.

Their relatives - who were themselves subjected to reprisals by the authorities for requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of their family members - are extremely concerned about their physical integrity and safety.

On October 17, 2017, Palestinian lawyer and human rights defender, Shireen Issawi, was released from an Israeli prison after being arbitrarily detained for over three and a half years.

Issawi was arrested along with her brothers, Shadi and Medhat, in March 2014, and accused of “cooperating with actors working against Israel.” Her arrest came as part of a crackdown by the Israeli authorities on lawyers who had defended Palestinian prisoners.