Detentions in Egypt and Syria and murder in Iraq

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood website recorded that three of its activists were detained on 13 September after a rally in Sharqiyya province, 85 km northeast of Cairo, intended to honour students who had done well in the past academic year. In Alexandria, 230 km north of Cairo, two Brotherhood members were detained at a similar rally on 12 September.

The banned but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, which constitutes the largest opposition movement in parliament, regularly holds social activities.

Hamdi Hassan MP, who heads the bloc, said: "They [Egypt's state security forces] don’t take such measures when the rally is organised by a ruling National[Democratic] Party member.“

Frequent arrests of Brotherhood members are justified, the government says, because the party is banned. Emergency law and prohibitions on disturbing public order are frequently cited to justify arrests.

In Iraq, police confirmed the murder of three local journalists whose deaths were condemned by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent group monitoring press freedom worldwide.

Safa Ismaiel Enad, a 31-year-old freelance photographer for several local media outlets, was shot on 12 September by two gunmen in a photo print shop in Baghdad's eastern neighborhood of Ur, Police 1st Lt.

Mohamed Khayon said. On the same day, Hadi Anawi al-Joubouri, 56, a journalist and representative of the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate, was ambushed as he drove between Baquba and Khalis, about 60 km northeast of the capital, Baghdad, Khayon said. His body was riddled with bullets.

On 9 September, Abdul-Karim al-Rubaie, a page designer for the state-run al-Sabah newspaper, was killed on his way to work in Karrada district in downtown Baghdad, Khayon added.

Al-Rubaie had received death threats after he accused religious extremists of a car bomb attack on the newspaper on 27 August, killing one person and injuring 30, a colleague said on condition of anonymity.

Al-Sabah newspaper is part of the government-run Iraqi Media Net group, which includes the al-Iraqiya satellite channel.

"Journalists continue to be targeted simply because they report the news in Iraq and their murderers have gone unpunished by the Iraqi authorities," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement. The CPJ was investigating the circumstances surrounding Al-Rubaie’s death, Simon said.

According to the CPJ, murder accounts for 64 percent of work-related deaths among journalists and media-support workers in Iraq, with crossfire and combat-related deaths accounting for the rest.

In all, 79 journalists and 28 media-support workers have been killed in Iraq since the war began on 20 March 2003, making it the deadliest conflict in CPJ's 25-year history.

At the same time, the New York-based Associated Press said US military in Iraq had imprisoned its Pulitzer prize-winning photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.
"Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for 'imperative reasons of security'," Tom Curley, AP's president and chief executive officer, said.

"The news cooperative's review of Hussein's work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system," Curley added.

Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began working for AP's Iraq bureau in September 2004.

He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on 12 April of this year.

"We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable," he said.

The death penalty was in the spotlight last week in Jordan, with the Court of Cassation announcing on 10 September that two capital sentences passed by the Criminal Court against two men in February 2004 for the rape and murder of another man would be upheld.

The verdict came a month after the government decided to abolish the death penalty for some crimes, including possession of illegal explosives and weapons and drug-related offences. Local human-rights activists at the time welcomed the decision but regretted the fact that there were still 16 crimes subject to the death penalty.

On 11 September, a group of 47 inmates from the Juweideh prison in East Amman began a hunger strike to protest against the jail conditions and to ask for their trials to be speeded up.

The detainees, who are being held on order from the State Security Court (SSC), also protested against the heavy bail of US $14,000 set by the military court for their release.

As yet, neither the Arab Organisation for Human Rights nor the government-run National Centre for Human Rights has been given permission by the Police Security Department to visit the prisoners.

This was the third time in as many months that inmates from different detention centres in Jordan had gone on a hunger strike.

Security services in Syria arrested human-rights activist Mohammad Haji Darwish on 14 September, according to the Syrian Organisation for Human Rights (SOHR).

Darwish, a member of the country’s Association for Human Rights, “was summoned by the military security services on Thursday and arrested”, said SOHR. “We denounce political detentions, notably those aimed at civil rights activists, and remind the government of its responsibilities under international law,” said SOHR in a statement.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is concerned about the fate of three Ahwazi refugees (Iranian Arabs) in Syria. According to the UNHCR, the three were arrested by Syrian authorities last May in Damascus and have been detained since then.

“We have been in regular contact with Syrian authorities in Damascus as well as in Geneva to discuss the situation of the three men.

Our staff have been promised several times that they should be able to meet the three detainees, but so far we have had no access, despite numerous requests,” the UNHCR said in a statement.

UNHCR, which has appealed for the immediate release of the three, has also called on the Syrian authorities to refrain from extraditing them to Iran, and instead to allow them to leave for their countries of resettlement. All three have been accepted for resettlement in western Europe. As a rule, the Syrian authorities refuse to discuss all human-rights issues.

Ahwazi refugees arrived in Syria and Iraq from Iran most recently in 2005 after a confrontation between members of the Ahwazi community and government forces in the oil-rich Ahwaz region of south-western Iran.

SA/SM/MF/AR