human rights | The Gad About Town

#OpKKK: Anonymous vs. The Klan

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Mark Aldrich

(Updated at 4:00 p.m. to add information.)

Last night, various Twitter accounts said to be associated with Anonymous, the famous hacktivist collective, started to publish links to documents listing names of people it says are members of the Ku Klux Klan, including four U.S. senators. Further, it announced that it had shut down several KKK websites and servers.

Several minutes ago, the official Twitter account for the operation, @Operation_KKK, wrote, “This account has NOT YET released any information. We believe in due diligence and will NOT recklessly involve innocent individuals #OpKKK.” (Tweet image below the fold.)
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An Impending Beheading

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Mark Aldrich

[Update, January 3, 2016: Sheikh Nimr was executed by beheading and his body crucified on January 2, 2016, by the authorities in Saudi Arabia. He was one of 47 executed that day. The oppressed Shia population in Saudi Arabia is protesting; Iran, a majority Shia nation is officially outraged. The Sheikh was a soft-spoken leader of that population.

Below is a post from October 2015.]

His family says that he has calmly accepted his probable fate: Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr is due to be beheaded soon, possibly this week. A post from his Facebook account this morning confirmed that Sheikh Nimr was informed by his family (rather than by a judge in a hearing) yesterday that a court upheld his sentence. It said that he thanked them for the information.

Sheikh Nimr is the uncle of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the young man who has also been sentenced to die by beheading because he was arrested at a protest. The fact that Ali was arrested while he was a juvenile and his outrageous sentence of beheading and subsequent crucifixion—the public display of his dead body—garnered worldwide condemnation and even statements from leaders in other nations that used Ali’s name specifically in requests that he be spared, that he be set free; that specificity was somewhat shocking because politicians usually are not so specific and they employ that watered-down phrase “human rights in general” when they want to signify displeasure with an ally’s torching of human rights in general but without risking consequences. Political leaders in the United Kingdom have risked consequences in speaking Ali’s name; none have done so in my country.

The public display of outrage specific to Ali’s case sparked a similarly rare display of Saudi anger specific to the outrage when the Saudi embassy in London released a statement that decried the public statements and even named Ali.
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Saudi Youths Sentenced to Die: Updated 10/12

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Mark Aldrich

What is known is that as of today, October 12, ‪Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, a 20-year-old Saudi sentenced to death by beheading, has not been beheaded. His body has not been crucified and then displayed, which is the second horrifying part of his sentence. Because corporal and capital sentences in Saudi Arabia are usually implemented on Fridays—after public prayers—dread accompanies the approach of each Friday for friends and family of those sentenced, and then with the confirmation from Ali’s family that his odious sentence was not carried out, a tense non-relief follows. But he is not the only under-age prisoner in Saudi Arabia who has been sentenced to death by beheading.

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) has been publicizing three stories: Ali al-Nimr’s and those of Dawood Hussain Almarhoon and Abedallah al-Zaher. All three were arrested before they were 18 years of age, all three have been held in prison since the arrests (each young man was arrested in 2012), and all three have been almost certainly tortured.

As of Saturday, Ali and the other teenagers were moved to the Saudi capital. No advance notice was given to their families, who learned about it after the fact. What this means or portends is not clear.

Ali’s father is quoted in tonight’s Guardian online as saying, “I’m very worried now because they’ve moved my son to a prison in Riyadh and he is in solitary confinement. I expect that this can only mean bad news and I fear he could be executed at any moment. Dawoud al-Marhoon also faces the same fate as my son, but so do six others. So in total there are eight young men who have been sentenced to death. My son is completely innocent.”
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