Noah Al Saadi, a 32-year-old Human Rights Defender has been released today by the Omani Police. He was arrested on 13 July 2014 by the Special Security Police Division forces and had been detained incommunicado since. It goes without doubt that these unlawful arrest and detention constituted retaliation for his work in monitoring human rights abuses and speaking up for other human rights activists as well as political prisoners in Oman.

On 6 August 2014, Alkarama called on the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navi Pillay to ask the United Nations Security Council to refer the war crimes committed in Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

On 17 July 2014, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression to call on the Moroccan authorities to cease all acts of judicial and administrative harassment against Mahmoud El Haissan immediately. Saharawi channel Rasd TV journalist, El Haissan was arrested on 4 July and arbitrarily detained in the local prison of Al Akhal in El Aaiun.

The Saudi Supreme Court has just overturned a ruling sentencing a Saudi national to the death penalty. In a tweet sent from his official twitter page this morning, Mabrook Al Sai'ari thanked Alkarama, without which his sentence would have been executed on 8 September 2013.

On 8 July 2014, Alkarama and Al Wissam Humanitarian Assembly requested the intervention of the UN Working  Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, with the Iraqi authorities to release Mustafa Jassim Kazem Al Rubaie immediately or at least to put him under the protection of the law. Arrested by the Iraqi authorities on 26 June 2006, the 24-year old Iraqi student was last seen on a video footage of a prison in Baghdad in February 2011, but the authorities continue to deny his detention.

On 8 July 2014, Alkarama wrote to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian territories to call upon the Israeli authorities to investigate the arbitrary execution of 17-year old Palestinian, Zakariah Jamal Abu Arram.

On 18 April 2014, members of the Egyptian Homeland security abducted seven women on the same day in Assiut. One of them, Asma Khelf Chendine Abdelmajid, a young doctor working at Al Qasr Hospital was arrested in front of several witnesses as she was leaving work after a night shift. The authorities deny detaining her, raising strong concerns over her fate.

Since the launch on 8 July 2014 of "Operation Protective Edge", Israel's third major offensive on the Gaza strip in the last six years, the Israeli defence forces have killed 171 civilians, including 48 children and 31 women. Amongst them are the cases of four families, documented by Alkarama, which amount to 30 victims of extrajudicial executions, almost half of whom are children.

On 26 June 2014, the Egyptian Ministry of Solidarity put forward a draft law regulating associations that would give the government and security agencies veto power over all activities of associations in Egypt. Concerned about this draft law that bears many resemblances with the law that was in force under Mubarak and violates both the Egyptian constitution and international law, Alkarama wrote to the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association to intervene with the Egyptian authorities so that they refrain from adopting it.

On 9 July, Alkarama sent an urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders to call upon Israeli authorities to respect their obligation to let defenders carry out their work freely. In particular, Alkarama brought the Special Rapporteur's attention on the case of Badia Dwaik, a respected human rights activist for the Palestinian cause, who has been continuously subjected to reprisals and harassment for his work documenting Israel's violations against Palestinians.