The efforts of the Government of Sudan to obstruct the engagement of civil society activists in a United-Nations-led human rights review of the country is unacceptable and shows blatant contempt not just for human rights defenders in Sudan, but to human rights standards and the UN Human Rights Council, 36 Sudanese and international groups and seven prominent Sudanese individuals said today.

In March 2016, Alkarama sent two communications to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) regarding the disappearances in November 2015 and February 2016 of two Egyptian students, Ahmed Ihab Mohamed Al Naggar and Mohammed Mohammed Abdelmotaleb Al Husseini following their arrests by the authorities.

Jordanian Police arrested Mahdi Suleiman, 57-year-old, on 18 February 2016, in front of the Israeli Embassy in Amman, while he was peacefully protesting against the arbitrary detention of Palestinians by the Israeli authorities, including his son, Mohammed Mahdi Saleh Suleiman, who was arrested in 2013 at the age of 16, tortured and later sentenced by a military court to 15 years in prison for “attempting to kill Israeli settlers by means of throwin

Alkarama has just solicited the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (UNSRT) regarding the continuous detention of 10 young women - most of whom are students -, since their arrest in Damietta streets on 5 May 2015.

On 5 February 2016, the Egyptian authorities arrested three men in El Beheira and Kafr El Sheikh Governorates. While their families were trying to locate them, Abou Obeida Said Ahmed Al Amoury, Islam Ibrahim El Tohamy Ibrahim and Mohammed Gommaa Mahmoud El Safty were in fact secretly detained by the Homeland Security and the police. Tortured for several days, they were forced to sign confessions that they could not read. Accused of being members of an active terrorist group, they now face trial and remain detained to date.

Alkarama welcomes the recent release of Waleed Al Dod Al Mekki Al Hussain, a Sudanese national who was arrested by the Saudi General Intelligence forces on 23 July 2015.

The human rights situation in Oman was reviewed on 5 November 2015 by the United Nations Member States, in the context of the country’s second

Alkarama has just solicited the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to urgently ask the Egyptian authorities to end the judicial harassment against 14-year-old Ibrahim and 17-year-old Ahmed Shaaban Youssef and to release the latter.