29 January 2018 – Last week, Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) sentenced two prominent human rights defenders, Mohammed Abdullah al-Otaibi and Abdullah al-Attawi, to 14 and seven years in prison respectively. The SCC found them guilty on a number of spurious free expression- and free association-related crimes, including “participating in setting up an organization[…]
Sayed Hadi Ahmed is a minor being arbitrarily detained in Bahrain’s Dry Dock Detention Center, meant only for adult populations. He was 15 at the time of his arrest, and has been subjected to torture on multiple occasions. At midnight on 13 December 2016, Sayed Hadi was asleep at his grandfather’s home in Bani Jamra.[…]
25 January 2018 – Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya has been fined £120,000 ($171,556) by Ofcom, a British communications regulatory body, for infringing on the privacy of imprisoned Bahraini political leader and torture survivor Hassan Mashaima. The penalty follows the regulator’s decision, in April 2017, that Al Arabiya would face sanctions for broadcasting a recorded testimony[…]
22 January 2018 – Today, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council conducted the third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) cycle of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dozens of states issued recommendations to the Emirati Government, urging human rights reforms on a variety of thematic issue areas ranging from free expression and capital punishment to migrant[…]
Ali Habib Saleh is a 25-year-old Bahraini citizen who has been arbitrarily detained, tortured, and denied healthcare by the Bahraini government. The Government of Bahrain has used the judicial system to arbitrarily harass Ali – he has been arrested not once but four times. After his first arrest, he was tried in absentia for charges[…]