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Human rights violations in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Israel and Yemen

In Egypt, a prominent member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Al-Hayawan, was released from jail, the Brotherhood reported on 23 September. He was detained by state security forces in December 2005 during the controversial parliamentary elections, accused of belonging to a banned group and of disturbing public order.

Approximately 700 Brotherhood supporters remain in prison.

Bloggers reported that state security issued several threats by phone to Egyptian blogger Mohamed Gamal, who posts under the site http://t5at5a.blogspot.com/ He was asked to take down a posting deemed insulting to President Hosni Mubarak. Public insults of the president or his family are punishable by law.

In Iraq, local television journalist Ahmed Riyadh al-Karbouli, 25, who worked for Baghdad TV, was shot dead by masked gunmen on 16 September in Ramadi, 115 kilometres west of Baghdad. Baghdad TV is owned by major Sunni political group the Iraqi Islamic Party.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned al-Karbouli's killing, saying he had received death threats from insurgents over the past four months warning him to leave the television station.

CPJ said that al-Karbouli's death brought the number of journalists killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003 to 80, while 28 media support workers have also been killed by insurgency and coalition troops.

Meanwhile, Kalshan al-Bayati, a 33-year-old correspondent for the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat was arrested on 21 September in the northern city of Tikrit and accused of links with Al-Qa’eda, a police lieutenant said on condition of anonymity.

Al-Bayati, whose reporting had been critical of security forces in Tikrit, had already been arrested earlier this month for possible links to insurgents, CPJ said. She was jailed for three days, but no links were found, the organisation added.

On 19 September, the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced in a new report the arbitrary arrest and abusive treatment of detainees held at the General Intelligence Department’s (GID) central detention facility in Amman, Jordan. It said detainees cannot seek an independent judicial review of the grounds for their arrest and continued detention.

The report said many suspects were held in incommunicado but never charged and were eventually released without trial.

The Jordanian government spokesperson Nasser Judeh has said that “all the concerned parties [government and security forces] will study the report thoroughly and respond to the claims made”.

However, in a meeting with HRW a day before the report was released high-ranking GID officials denied that there were any abuses.

In Syria, Mahmoud Sarem, a doctor and civil society activist, was released from prison on 19 September on a bail of 5,000 Syrian pounds (US$ 100, according to the Syrian Organisation for Human Rights (SOHR).

Sarem was arrested on 19 September, 2005 and charged with various offences, including weakening national feelings and stirring up armed rebellion against Syrian authorities.

SOHR expressed concern over the deteriorating health of Ared Dalilla, a renowned 66-year-old Syrian economist who was arrested in 2001 and convicted two years ago of attempting to change the constitution, inciting riot and disseminating false information. He is serving a 10-year sentence in prison.

In another development, the National Organisation for Human rights in Syria (NOHR) told IRIN that the trial of Kamal Labwani, a medical doctor and human rights activist who was arrested in November 2005 upon his return from the United States, has been postponed to 29 September.

Labwani was accused of contacting a foreign country to instigate it to launch aggression against Syria, a charge whose penalty could be life imprisonment with hard labour. He is also charged with spreading false information, which carries a penalty of a maximum three years in prison.

The Syrian government does not comment on such issues.

Hina Jilani, the special representative of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan for human rights workers criticised Israel on 22 September for cracking down on rights monitors working in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).

She said the Palestinian government also was to blame for the repression of field workers, lawyers, journalists, health professionals and humanitarian workers.

"I have received credible accounts of serious harm, including killings that human rights defenders have suffered," Jilani, a human rights lawyer from Pakistan, told the UN Human Rights Council, the UN’s top rights watchdog.

She praised Israel for its general respect toward Israeli rights groups working within its borders.

But those same groups face difficulties in promoting the rights of Arab communities, and Israel's government "shows even less tolerance for the activities for the protection of the rights of the Palestinian population in the occupied Palestinian territory”, Jilani said.

Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel responded to Jilani's speech by noting that its security concerns had since increased.

"Israeli towns, villages and civilians continue to be targeted daily by Kassam rockets launched from Palestinian territory," said Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva.

"The difficulties of human rights defenders in the occupied Palestinian territory are compounded because of the failure of the Palestinian Authority to respect human rights and the rule of law in the areas under its control," Jilani said.

The serious concerns, she said, include cases of torture and a failure to address threats made against women's rights advocates.

The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) condemned on 11 September the blocking of some independent websites in Yemen and the harassment of some journalists by the Yemeni government just before the 20 September presidential elections.

Yemeni authorities blocked the Yemeni Council website and Yemen Sound website. The two websites are independent and enjoy a high visitors’ rate as they allow for debate, especially among Yemeni youth.

The Yemeni Council website was blocked at the beginning of August while the Yemen Sound website was blocked at the beginning of September. The two websites had criticised the Yemeni President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, which is a punishable act, the government says.

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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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