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Other politicians have often accused Karoui of corruption, and cases have been opened against him, as well as his Nessma TV channel

Karoui founded the Qalb Tounes party, which came second in 2019's legislative vote, just ahead of that year's election cycle. The party is an ally of the Islamist-inspired Ennahda party, which holds the most seats in parliament

The tribal moderns may endorse Islamism, or liberal democracy, but the fact of the matter remains constant. From the perspective of regimes, they are a dangerous bunch, simply because if they invoke tribal solidarities, they may be heeded by their fellow cousins, both imaginary and real.

No doubt, activists in Kuwait and other GCC countries will fall under the heavy weight of a pact designed above all to control, monitor and punish dissidents. The GCC itself may not move from cooperation to unification in the near future but it has certainly become yet another mechanism to silence peaceful and legitimate opposition across borders. Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/saudi-gcc-security-dissident-activism-detention-opposition.html Madawi Al-Rasheed Columnist  Dr. Madawi Al-Rasheed is a columnist for Al-Monitor and a visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has written extensively about the Arabian Peninsula, Arab migration, globalization, religious trans-nationalism and gender. On Twitter: @MadawiDr !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs'); function target_popup(a){window.open("","formpopup","width=400,height=400,resizeable,scrollbars");a.target="formpopup"}

Under Trump, the United States has been largely reluctant to challenge Egypt, the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, which provides the Department of Defense with overflight rights and the ability to navigate the Suez Canal.

Kassem had been on a liquid-only hunger strike and had not received proper medical treatment before dying of heart failure in January.

a State Department official said the agency would not comment on internal deliberations. “We remain deeply saddened by the needless death in custody of Moustafa Kassem and we are reviewing our options and consulting with Congress,” the official said. “In the wake of the tragic and avoidable death of Moustafa Kassem, we will continue to emphasize to Egypt our concerns regarding the treatment of detainees, including U.S. citizens.”

In his role as the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Leahy, a long-standing critic of Egypt’s human rights record, has held up $105 million in military aid to Cairo to purchase Apache helicopters and Hellfire missiles. Leahy imposed the funding freeze on Egypt two years ago in response to its detention of Kassem, its failure to fully cover the medical costs for an American citizen wounded in a botched 2015 Apache helicopter raid, and its refusal to permit adequate U.S. oversight of its use of American military assistance in its counterterrorism operations in Sinai.

The dual citizen—held without charges for much of his six-year detention—insisted he had been wrongly arrested during an August 2013 visit to his birth country that coincided with the deadly Rabaa Square massacre against demonstrators protesting the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi. Kassem’s advocates said he was not involved in the Rabaa Square demonstrations. He was in prison for over five years before an Egyptian court, without due process, sentenced him to 15 years in prison in 2018.

There are at least three other American citizens—Reem Dessouky, Khaled Hassan, and Mohammed al-Amash—and two permanent residents—Ola Qaradawi and Hossam Khalaf—detained in Egypt on charges related to their political views, according to a bipartisan group of foreign-policy experts called the Working Group on Egypt that tracks the issue

“It is incomprehensible that Egypt, a close ally of the United States that receives some $1.5 billion annually in assistance from American taxpayers, would be less responsive than Iran, Lebanon, and other countries to repeated calls for the humanitarian release of detained Americans,”

Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham stopped a provision in the final version of the State Department’s appropriations bill last year that would have withheld nearly $14 million in military aid until Egypt paid off the medical expenses for April Corley, an American mistakenly injured in an attack by Egyptian military forces in the nation’s western desert in 2015.

The United States and Egypt set up a structured process of defense meetings to properly resource the nation’s military after the Obama administration suspended aid amid massacres after Morsi’s ouster, but the forum “has long devolved into a grab bag of weapons requests,”

“By sending this amount of military assistance for such a long time—when you add it up its $40 billion over decades—what the United States has ended up doing is feeding the beast that’s devouring the whole country,” she said, referring to the Egyptian military.

Hossam denied any wrongdoing but Cairo University - where she is studying archaeology - said it would enforce maximum penalties against her which could include expulsion.

Several women in Egypt have previously been accused of “inciting debauchery” by challenging the country’s conservative social norms, including actress Rania Youssef after critics took against her choice of dress for the Cairo Film Festival in 2018.

In 2018 Egypt adopted a cyber crime law that grants the government full authority to censor the internet and exercise communication surveillance. A media regulation law also allows authorities to block individual social media accounts.

Egyptian women’s rights campaigner Ghadeer Ahmed blamed the arrests on rising social pressures on women and “corrupt laws”. “[These laws] condemn people for their behaviour that may not conform to imagined social standards for how to be a ‘good citizen’ and a respectful woman,” she wrote in a Tweet.

According to the National Committee for the Liberation of the Detainees (CNLD), Algerian authorities detained at least 91 prisoners of conscience between June 21 and Oct. 15 in Algiers alone

Kaci Tansaout, CNLD coordinator, remarked to Al-Monitor, “Since Friday, Sept. 13, it is no longer ‘arrests’ but rather kidnappings of known and identified persons, either before a march or at the end of a sit-in in support of detainees.” 

The lawyers highlighted arrests outside the legal framework, abuse of pre-trial detention, the disproportionate concentration of detentions in Algiers and denying detainees the right to contact their family or a lawyer

detainees have mainly been arrested on the grounds of allegedly violating Articles 75, 79 and 96 of the penal code, respectively, undermining the morale of the army, undermining the integrity of the national territory and publishing content undermining the national interest

Many detainees have been arrested for carrying the Amazigh flag during protests and later accused of undermining the integrity of the national territory, a violation that carries a prison term of one to 10 years and a fine between 3,000 and 70,000 Algerian dinars ($25 to $600).

“At RAJ, we are directly affected by the arrests because we already have nine activists behind bars…, but those in jail always ask us to remain mobilized, keep up the struggle and not to worry about them. This is what gives us the courage and resolve [to persevere].” 

“After 34 weeks of massive popular protests throughout the country, the government is deploying a [broad] strategy to counteract the peaceful revolution, including intimidation and prevention of free movement, but also, and mainly, by the exploitation of the judiciary as a tool of repression,”

“Another manoeuver of the government to try to weaken or stop the popular movement is to exert pressure on the editorial offices of the public and private media, including over coverage of popular demonstrations.”

Mr Douma listed in a Facebook post the names of 16 mostly well-known government critics who remain behind bars, including British-Egyptian Alaa Abdel Fattah and former presidential candidate Abdel Monaim Abul Fotouh.“And there are thousands of others who have also been crushed by an unjust system just like I was … There will be no joy without loved ones from among family, comrades and even foes being free as well,” he said

Rights activist Hossam Bahgat welcomed the pardon, but said the decision was made “without any transparency or understanding of why some people were selected (for a pardon) and others ignored”.

The issue of pretrial detention has been openly debated over the past year, with critics and experts calling on Mr El Sisi in online articles and social media posts to end it. They label it as the government’s roundabout way of keeping dissidents jailed without being formally charged or put on trial.

Mohammed Zaree, an award-winning rights activist, believes the release of Mr Douma and others are not part of a political reform campaign, but more of an attempt to defuse growing frustration with the economic crisis.“Political reform is not something that is in progress at this point of time,”

A dollar crunch has cast doubt on the nation’s ability to repay its huge foreign debt – more than $160 billion – and led to the suppression of imports and the subsequent disruption of industries reliant on imported material.

“Everything will be fine with your good prayers,”

There are more than 6.5 million internet and social media users in Jordan, the majority of whom are youth, out of a population of roughly 11 million. Jordanians are avid social media users, and over the years have used Facebook, WhatsApp, and other platforms to share news not broadcast on state-controlled channels, jokes targeting the regime, and rumors about the myriad political and corruption scandals circulating across the country on a regular basis

Cybercrimes Law No. 27/2015 is a popular regime tool used to control expression online. Article 11 regulates expression on online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. In April 2019, parliament introduced amendments to the law to criminalize the act of spreading “rumors” and “hate speech,” extending to the use of private messaging apps such as WhatsApp. The latest amendments define hate speech as “every writing and every speech or action intended to provoke sectarian or racial sedition, advocate for violence, or foster conflict between followers of different religions and various components of the nation.” And under the cybercrime law, Jordanians will face a criminal penalty if they are convicted of “sending or resending or disseminating information through the Internet or website or any information system that includes defamation, slander or libel against any person.” Between 2019 and 2020, the cases brought under the cybercrime law exceeded two thousand, more than double the number from the year before. In 2022, there have been more arrests under charges of “spreading false news,” including the detentions of several high-profile journalists.

Even the Jordanian National Center for Human Rights, a semi-governmental organization, wrote in its own recent annual report that “the detention of individuals for what they express is continuing.” Alarmingly, a recent Citizen Lab and Front Line Defenders joint report confirmed that two operators, “likely agencies of the Jordanian government,” used the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to hack the phones of at least four Jordanians, including a human rights defender, a lawyer, and a journalist. 

Loosely formed groups of youth activists, often described with the term hirak (“movement”), organize in various neighborhoods and towns across Jordan around shared issues. In 2019, a workshop looking at youth activism across the Middle East and North Africa found that youth activism does not adhere to formalized structures of organizing, such as political parties, professional associations, and civil society organizations.

we have seen youth movements in the past decade break the generations-old divisions of urban versus rural and West Bank versus East Bank

organizing around their shared frustrations over unchecked levels of corruption, perpetual over-education combined with underemployment, and restrictions on what they can write on social media or when they can gather.

the attitudes of ruling elites and public officials toward youth are dismissive

the many initiatives launched over the years have not ever been driven by local youth demands, but rather have been top-down, buzzword-filled projects, centralized within the newly created Ministry of Youth, with little to no popular support or participation

In the midst of this global energy crisis, African leaders have argued that their nations should also be allowed to ramp up fossil fuel use to improve domestic energy access—given they had contributed so little to historic carbon emissions. Indeed, 43 percent of Africa’s 1.4 billion people still lack access to electricity. As a result of soaring energy prices, the number of people without access to energy across Africa rose for the first time in decades, threatening to erode all gains made. According to the International Energy Agency, around 1 billion Africans will still rely on dirty fuels, such as firewood, for cooking in 2030. However, Western governments demanded that multilateral lenders, such as the World Bank, stop funding fossil fuel projects to reduce global carbon emissions.

Egypt, Africa’s second-largest economy, agreed on Oct. 27 to a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It was the country’s fourth since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power in a coup in 2013, making Egypt the IMF’s second-largest debtor after Argentina. Long a top choice for emerging market investors, Egypt had become heavily dependent on hot money, but investors panicking over the war in Ukraine pulled around $20 billion out of Egypt between February and March.

Inflation in Ghana rose to 15.7 percent in March as the Ghanaian currency lost 16 percent of its value against the dollar, prompting protests in June over the soaring cost of living.

Africa is seeking more than just climate reparations as it looks to transform the global system. African leaders want a permanent seat for the African Union at the G-20, two seats on the U.N. Security Council, and a reordering of global tax rules under the United Nations.

2022 was a year for the restitution of Africa’s historical artifacts stolen by colonial powers. The Smithsonian Institution agreed to return its collection of Benin Bronzes and placed legal ownership with Nigerian authorities. In July, Germany handed back two bronzes and put more than 1,000 other items into Nigeria’s ownership while a digital database—known as Digital Benin, which documents Western museums’ existing collection of Benin’s artifacts—was unveiled in November. Despite this progress, there are still unanswered calls for the British Museum, the largest holder of Benin Bronzes, to return its loot. In September, the world marked the 200th anniversary of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, a fragment of written decrees issued by Egyptian priests during the reign of Ptolemy V (204 to 180 B.C.). Egyptian scholars and archaeologists renewed their demand for the stone’s return, which has been housed at the British Museum in London since 1802. Their call has garnered more than 135,000 signatures on an online petition.

An online archive to showcase Mali’s cultural history was launched in March, digitizing more than 40,000 of Timbuktu’s ancient manuscripts, some dating to the 12th century and originally written in medieval Arabic but translated to several languages in an online platform. Malian librarians and their assistants secretly transported hundreds of thousands of documents into family homes in a bid to save them from destruction by jihadis. Through those efforts, some 350,000 manuscripts from 45 libraries across the city were kept safe.

Torture and degrading treatment continue to be systematically practiced against Egyptian citizens

The president and his party undertook a campaign to attack freedom of the press through statements aimed at reducing the relative freedom which is currently allowed and by submitting various complaints to the investigative authorities against journalists and other media professionals. [4] Moreover, representatives of the president’s party in the constituent assembly supported the inclusion within the new constitution of provisions which allow for such repressive practices against the media, including the detention of journalists.

protests have repeatedly been suppressed through excessive use of force

police and the security establishment continue to shirk their legal responsibility to protect political and social protests and have been complicit in crimes of rape and sexual assault against female protestors

a new draft law on civil society associations which would eliminate the already limited margin available for forming associations, especially human rights organizations

National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) lacks independence, as the majority of its members belong to the ruling coalition. Indeed, a number of its members are well-known for their hostility towards human rights, and some of them use sectarian political speech publicly, including language inciting to hatred and violence against both Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities. Given the NCHR’s current composition and its practices to date, it is clear that the current purpose of the NCHR is to conceal or downplay human rights violations, rather than to expose and condemn them, as well as to enhance the image of the government before the international community. While the NCHR suffered perpetually from a lack of independence under the Mubarak regime, it has now completely lost all semblance of independence and has become an indirect platform for some of its members to publicly incite against human rights

Perhaps mindful of the problem Ozel faces stamping authority over a military shell-shocked by mass arrests, Erdogan recently criticized special prosecutors for ordering too many detentions.Critics had hitherto seen the prosecutors as "attack dogs" for Erdogan's government as it strove to bring the army to heel and convince the electorate that the AKP was its best bet to break Turkey's cycle of coups.His AK Party is now working on plans to dissolve the courts - a measure that could result in a collapse of the cases and undermine Erdogan's credibility.

With his opponents scattered, Erdogan may have decided now is the time to muzzle prosecutors, and give General Ozel a chance to rebuild morale.

Celebrations for national holidays have lost some of their militaristic trappings, and dress rules at military social engagements have been relaxed so, for example, the wives of President Gul or Prime Minister Erdogan are no longer unwelcome because they wear Muslim headscarves

Turkish forces haven't fought in any war since the early 1950s in Korea, but the people's emotional attachment to the armed forces is reinforced regularly with funerals for soldiers killed in the long-running separatist conflict with the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)

"The Turkish public really does love its armed forces."

Many suspect cases have been cooked up, with public opinion shaped by leaks to newspapers like Taraf and Zaman, closely tied to the Islamic movement headed by Fethullah Gulen."Too much of the evidence is doubtful to believe the investigations are aimed at further democratization,"

The military's forays into the political arena have become increasingly rare. General Ozel has made none.

A total 364 officers, serving and retired are being tried in connection with the plot

Arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and disappearance still take place

no constitutional system

Moreover, it is clear is that for all the rhetoric about "revolution" and the "state of the masses" the Libyan leadership has squandered much of the country's wealth twice over: on foolish projects at home and costly adventures abroad.

Libya, with a per capita oil output roughly equal to that of Saudi Arabia, boasts few of the advances - the urban and transport development,  educational and health facilities - that the oil-endowed Gulf states can claim

Libya has not introduced significant changes to its political system, and especially not with regard to human rights or governance. The Jamahiriyah remains in 2009 one of the most dictatorial as well as opaque of Arab regimes. Its 6 million people enjoy no significant freedoms

The improvement in Libya's international profile in recent years reflects the abandonment of the regime's nuclear-weapons programme and its policy of hunting down Libyan dissidents living abroad (including their kidnap and murder).

For Libya's reputation among other Arab states and peoples is abysmal, if the state is not actually an object of contempt.

Libya is far from the most brutal regime in the world, or even the region: it has less blood on its hands than (for example) Sudan, Iraq, and Syria

ruled for forty years with no attempt to secure popular legitimation.

The Libyan people have for far too long been denied the right to choose their own leaders and political system - and to benefit from their country's wealth via oil-and-gas deals of the kind the west is now so keen to promote. 

"Stop screaming or we'll take your kid,"

In a videotaped confession that was played during the trial, defendant Ali Isa Saqer said that Mattar had encouraged the protesters to run over police. Saqer's "confession," which later was aired on Bahrain's government-controlled television, was delivered in a flat monotone, and he appeared to be under duress. Saqer died April 9 while in detention, one of four detainees who've died while incarcerated. A video of his corpse at the ritual washing ceremony showed signs of severe beatings. The Bahraini government has acknowledged that he died of torture.

It was a full week before he was allowed to contact his wife, and the call was cut seconds after it began. Later the family learned that he'd suffered continuous and severe beatings during the first two weeks he was held, and had lost 45 pounds. On May 2, Sharif's wife issued a cry for help, saying he'd spent 47 days "in a notorious prison, suffering under brutal and continuous torture." She said he'd been taken to the military hospital twice, but that his family hadn't been allowed to see him. "We do not know whether he will be able to further tolerate daily beatings and torture and pray he survives this unspeakable treatment," she said. Between May 8 and May 22, Sharif had four hearings before a military tribunal, but his lawyer was able to attend only one session. He's been charged with conspiring to overthrow the monarchy.

Fairooz, Mattar and Sharif are all known as moderate reformers who advocate a constitutional monarchy with an elected government in place of the royal regime.

charges being considered by the South Sudanese authorities included treason and terrorism, both of which carry the death penalty

The detentions and office raid came as a response to NRT's January 26 coverage of a protest at a Turkish military facility in Silazdeh and of the arrival of injured protesters at the Dohuk Emergency Hospital, according to the broadcaster.

At least two civilians were killed by a Turkish airstrike in Duhok governorate on January 24, according to news reports. The casualties sparked a protest at the facility in Silazdeh on January 26, which resulted in one protester being killed and several being injured, news reports said.

Another element of this legacy is the paranoia that makes it difficult for regional governments to distinguish between academic researchers and spies

Imagine if Syria had imprisoned a British PhD student and kept them in solitary confinement for seven months with one consular visit—or if Iran covered up the brutal murder of an Italian PhD student by their police forces, as happened in Egypt in 2016. The double standards pertaining to academic freedom and the rule of law in countries formally allied with the United States and Europe and those characterized as rogue actors is so obvious it barely merits pointing out. The Emirati authorities certainly recognize this, and will continue to exploit this double standard so long as it remains intact.

Oil money, along with a new generation of rulers eager to use military intervention to demonstrate their power to domestic and foreign audiences, has made the Gulf not just a major weapons customer but an industry partner. The story of the UAE today is no longer Dubai’s position as a global finance hub, but Abu Dhabi’s position as an emerging player in high-tech weapons development.

Academic research is not espionage—but many parties (notably US and European governments) are implicated in the process that has allowed them to be conflated

Matt’s arrest and detention, therefore, is a clear message from UAE authorities that research into the country’s growing arms industry is off-limits, in much the same way that researchers and activists working on labor rights have found themselves surveilled, intimidated and imprisoned

The slow erosion of public funding for universities has bled dry the resources reserved to support PhD students, meanwhile trustees and consultants urge the adoption of for-profit business practices that generate return on investment, including partnering with defense technology firms for research grants.[3] The fact that educational institutions must go begging—hat in hand—to billionaire philanthropists and weapons conglomerates reflects both the growing share of defense industry involvement in industrial and research activities as well as the failure of our political system to levy sufficient taxes on the ultra-rich to directly fund basic investments in public education.

what does the weakening of US and European governments vis-à-vis their Gulf counterparts mean for the protection of students and scholars conducting overseas research?

Before my research on the Gulf, my focus was on the role of regional militaries (primarily Egypt and Jordan) in their domestic economies. The more I studied these cases the more I realized their military economies are not some peculiarity of third world political development, but a legacy of colonial militarization, the obstacles facing newly-independent states trying to industrialize their economies, and the extraordinary organizational and financial resources that weapons producers dedicate to proliferating their products all over the globe.

I do not know of any studies estimating the total number of academics and non-government researchers working on security and military-related issues across the globe, but I expect it is in the tens of thousands at the very least. At my home institution alone—The George Washington University—there are maybe a dozen faculty working on everything from the psychology of drone operators to the role gender plays in government defense contracting—and I’m pretty sure none of these people are spies. This kind of security studies—which examines topics like defense technology, the global arms industry and government contracting—is a growing field, not least due to the proliferation of information about these issues coming from the booming private sector. And as multinational defense firms and their complementary industry partners continue to chase investment shifting from the core capitalist countries to emerging regional powers like the Gulf States these latter sites will become increasingly important targets for such research.

Matt’s case should make us question not only the safety of Western researchers and our students but, more importantly, the continued harassment, intimidation and imprisonment of academics and democratic activists across the Middle East.