Human Rights

#SaveThe3: More Saudi Executions Loom

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Yesterday, Amnesty International, Reprieve, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, and other major human rights groups began to publicize the horrifying fear that the executions of Dawood al-Marhoon, Abed allahhassan al-Zaher, Ali Mohammad al-Nimr will likely take place today, March 12. The source is a report in Saudi Arabian media which does not name the three, who were teenagers when they were arrested at protests and were convicted of charges up to and including “terrorism,” but which states that mass executions of “terrorists” are impending in the Kingdom.

Okaz, a newspaper in Saudi Arabia is quoted: “The four terrorists awaiting the implementation of the death sentences complement the first group of 47.” That group of 47 included Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, ‪Ali Mohammed al-Nimr’s uncle who was a Shiite cleric who encouraged peaceful protest, and 46 others who were beheaded on January 2, as reported here. This is sufficiently similar to how Saudi Arabian authorities published information last autumn in advance of the mass executions in January to lead to human rights organizations sounding their alarms as loudly as possible.
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I Am His Voice: Hossein Ronaghi

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In his second-to-last post on Twitter (below), Hossein Ronaghi wrote, “The response to opinions is not prison.” But he is in prison, Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran, and has spent the last six and a half years fighting for his freedom of expression, his freedom, and now even his life itself.
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A New Delay for Shawkan Zeid

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

UPDATE, February 6, 2016: For a second time, the Egyptian court hearing for Mahmoud Abu Zeid, the photojournalist known as “Shawkan,” has been postponed, this time until March 26. The court cited the same reason it gave for the first postponement in December: that it does not have the space to accommodate the hearing. Because he was arrested in a widespread government crackdown, which was known as the “Rabaa Dispersal,” Shawkan has been included with 737 other individuals. All face similar charges of offenses against public order and national security, violence, murder, attacking security forces and civilians, engaging in armed conflicts, and destroying public facilities.

Multiple sources are reporting today that Shawkan has been moved to a “disciplinary cell,” in other words, solitary confinement. His social media accounts describe a tiny cell, a daily slice of bread, a bucket, no blanket. There is a disgusting irony in placing him in a small cell for any length of time, whether one hour or until March 26, when the reason for the two delays has been lack of space.
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