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On November 15, 2017, Algerian human rights defender Rafik Belamrania was sentenced to five years imprisonment by the Jijel Criminal Court for “supporting terrorism”. He was sentenced to a further three years' deprivation of his civil and political rights, which entails that, among other things, he cannot be a member of any association nor take part in human rights activism.

November 24, 2017

To: His Excellency Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Re: Call for action to condemn the Egyptian authorities’ crackdown on freedom of expression

Mr High Commissioner,

We, the undersigned organisations, are writing to express our great concern about the current human rights situation in Egypt.

On November 4, 2017, Mohamed Mohamed Mohamed Emam, a 60-year-old builder, was at the departure gate of the Cairo airport about to board his flight to Kenya when he was asked by members of the airport security to follow them to the security office. Emam was escorted by security officers while passengers waiting to board the same flight witnessed the scene.

On October 22, 2017, Samir Al Daami, an Iraqi-Norwegian political commentator, was arrested after publishing a post on Facebook the day before criticising Iraq’s prime minister. Al Daami is currently detained incommunicado at Al Muthanna Air Base, where he is being denied contact with his family and lawyer.

On November 9, 2017, following its review of the current human rights situation in Jordan, the UN Human Rights Committee (HR Committee) published its concluding observations, raising concerns over the human rights violations committed under the pretext of counter-terrorism, the issue of torture and the treatment of refugees, among other issues.

On October 5, 2017, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) issued an opinion calling for the immediate release of Jaber Al Amri, a Saudi citizen detained since 2014 after publicly criticising the practice of arbitrary detention in the country and advocating for the release of his brother, still detained long after the completion of his sentence.

On November 9, 2017, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) published an Opinion calling for the immediate release of Taysir Salman, a 44-year-old Jordanian journalist who has been detained in the UAE since 2015 – during which time he was disappeared for 80 days – as a result of a Facebook post.

On November 7, 2017, Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly submitted five more cases of enforced disappearances in Iraq to the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED). The five disappearances, which targeted two families, all took place in Latifiya, a small town south of Baghdad, on June 6, 2015.

Two families targeted in wave of arrests

Malik Al Janabi and his brother, Yasser, were both arrested by members of the 17^th Division of the Iraqi Army on the night of June 6, 2015.

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.