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On 28 April 2016, Alkarama wrote to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) regarding the case of two Yemeni citizens, Mujahed Mohamed Ahmed Al Hamdani and Abdulrahman Saeed Hasan Al-Buriahi, who disappeared after their abduction by the Special Security Forces of the military and the Houthi-Saleh Coalition respectively.

On 27 April 2016, Alkarama seized the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (WGEID) and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (UNSRT) to, once more, request their intervention with the Emirati authorities on the case of known activist

Ammar Tellawi, a 36-year-old peaceful activist and PhD student at Damascus University disappeared in July 2014 from Adra prison where he was detained. After family visits were denied, Ammar was transferred to another unknown location, and the prison administration refused to give his relatives any information on his fate and whereabouts.

Jordanian journalist Taysir Hasan Mahmoud Salman was supposed to fly from the United Arab Emirates, where he currently lives, to Jordan on vacation on 3 December 2015; however, he was prevented from boarding his flight by the airport authorities.

Alkarama welcomes the release, on 20 April 2016, of Abdulrab Ahmed Abdulrab Al Humaiqani, a human rights and political activist who was arrested by the Houthi-Saleh Coalition on 28 August 2015. After being arrested without a warrant nor being presented with the reasons for the arrest, Al Humaiqani was taken to an unknown location, where he was kept without contact with his family until his release.

The transfer of two Red Sea islands, Tiran and Sanafir, to Saudi Arabia has been the subject of considerable criticism in Egypt. On 15 April 2015, few days after the announcement of this deal between the two countries, Egyptians peacefully gathered to protest against it. Although people initially took to the streets to express their discontent over the planned handover, many slogans were directed against the increasingly authoritarian drift of the regime and the state security apparatus. Similar peaceful protests were held on 25 April 2016 across the country.

Alkarama welcomes the release, on 24 April 2016, of 12-year-old Palestinian student Dima Al-Wawi, who was arrested on her way to school on 9 February 2016 and, on 18 February, was sentenced by the Israeli Ofer Court to four months in prison for “carrying a knife”, which according to the court, would have been used to kill Israeli settlers.

In April 2016, Alkarama documented two more cases of enforced disappearance that took place in Syria in 2012 and 2013. The first case is that of Rami Al Jadi, a 25-year-old worker, who on 23 July 2012, was with two of his friends in a Damascus neighbourhood, when they were arrested by officers of the Syrian Army, who did not give any reason for the arrest. The families never received any official information on their fate and whereabouts.

On 24 January 2016, the Ministry of Interior declared having executed 32-year-old Mohamed Hamdan Mohamed Ali during a police operation in Beni Suef – a city located on the Nile’s shores, South of Cairo. The victim had however been arrested at work on 10 January 2016 and was missing since. Additionally, when his relatives were authorised to see his corpse, it bore evident marks of torture which made them believe that the authorities tried to cover-up the real circumstances of his death.

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