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Former Tunisian presidential candidate and media mogul Nabil Karoui has entered a hunger strike in protest against his continued "illegal" detention, his lawyer said in a news release.  Lawyer Nazih Souii said Karoui refused on Monday to sign a document acknowledging the extension of his pre-sentencing detention during a meeting with a judge overseeing his case at the country's judicial finance office

Karoui was found guilty of "financial corruption" on 24 December but has yet to receive a sentence. He has a right to an appeal, but it is not clear whether one has been filed.  On Monday, Karoui, who has insisted that his detention is purely political, said he would refuse to go willingly back to prison, announcing a "sit-in" at the judge's office following news of his extended detention.  Karoui launched a hunger strike on Friday that he plans to continue, his lawyer said. 

Karoui, president of Tunisia's Qalb Tounes party, was arrested in December on charges of money laundering and tax evasion. Arrested in 2019 as well, Karoui spent most of that year's presidential campaign in jail on the same charges.

A lawyer filed a lawsuit at a Kuwaiti court demanding the closure of the social networking site Twitter.

Authorities in the Gulf state have repeatedly cracked down on social media users, arresting those deemed to have “insulted” the state or its officials or “harmed” relations with other countries. In May the Kuwaiti Criminal Court sentenced activist Mosaed Al-Moseilem to five years in prison and a fine of 10,000 dinars ($32,856) after finding him guilty of criticising the UAE on Twitter.

Mahmoud al-Sisi, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s son and a senior official in the powerful General Intelligence Service (GIS), is being reassigned to a long-term position at Egypt’s diplomatic delegation in Moscow

perception within the president’s inner circle that Mahmoud al-Sisi has failed to properly handle a number of his responsibilities and that his increasingly visible influence in the upper decision-making levels of government is having a negative impact on his father’s image

Sending Mahmoud al-Sisi to Moscow will also help alleviate growing tensions within GIS about the role of the president’s son in the removal of senior officials from their posts in the intelligence apparatus since the president formally came to power in 2014

“They just want to see your visa,” a British embassy official told me on March 18, passing on a message from Egyptian security officials at the country’s visa and immigration office. I knew what that meant: Other journalists had been called to the same authority to have their visas revoked. Later that day, the British official called me again as I sheltered in a hotel room, after a lawyer advised me to flee my apartment in case it was raided by police. The security services had spoken to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had passed a second message to the British embassy. “They’re asking you to leave,”

I dodged the meeting at the visa authority by sending a lawyer in my place, after officials at the German embassy in Cairo—I’m a dual national—warned me I could be arrested or deported there. We think it’s best you get on a plane, they said. 

I’d reported for the Guardian that Egypt likely had more coronavirus infections than the country’s official total

In October 2016, lawyer Samir Sabri filed a lawsuit before the Second Circuit of the Administrative Judiciary Court, demanding that Shiite media outlets and websites be shut down in Egypt

“It is unacceptable and unreasonable to have a media platform in Egypt promoting Shiite ideology. Egypt is an Islamic state and the main source of legislation is Sharia under the constitution, which recognizes Christianity and Judaism to be monotheistic. El-Nafis is one of the news websites inciting against Saudi Arabia, Al-Azhar and the Ministry of Awqaf, where Ahmad Rasem al-Nafis attacks in his articles the Sunnis and Saudi Arabia and calls for professing the Shiite faith.”

“The Salafist leaders’ Wahhabism was behind the dissemination of extremism in Syria and Yemen. Shiite channels and websites in Egypt do not advocate extremism or renounce any ideology or doctrine. They call for dealing with the Shiites as Muslims at a time when Salafist movements claim that Shiites are non-Muslims.”

Tunisia's General Labour Union (UGTT: Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail), created more than 100 years ago, combines a rich history of anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian struggles. With nearly 700,000 members, it stands as the most powerful organisation and a political heavyweight of leftist and secularist leaning members. It was significant in leading the civic alliance's mediator role in negotiating a democratic plan and timetable for its fulfilment.

the long-established Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH: La Ligue Tunisienne pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme) is the oldest in the Arab world

the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA: Union Tunisienne de l'Industrie, du Commerce et de l'Artisanat) eventually responded to the UGTT’s invitation to endorse and join the national dialogue

An Egyptian prosecutor ordered on Tuesday that a lawyer be detained for 15 days after the publication of a picture of him wearing a yellow vest similar to those worn by protesters in France, a local rights activist said

The arrest in the northern city of Alexandria came as traders said authorities were blocking the sale of the vests to forestall any copycat protests ahead of the Jan. 25 anniversary of Egypt’s 2011 uprising.

Ramadan was also accused of charges including “spreading false news” and “spreading the ideology of a terrorist group”. Two security sources said Ramadan had been found in possession of eight such vests. The Alexandria prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment

Syrians have shown relentless ingenuity in adapting to every stage of a horrendous conflict, salvaging remnants of dignity, solidarity and vitality amid nightmarish circumstances

The decimation of Syria’s male population represents, arguably, the most fundamental shift in the country’s social fabric. As a generation of men has been pared down by death, disability, forced displacement and disappearance, those who remain have largely been sucked into a violent and corrupting system centered around armed factions

80 of the village’s men have been killed and 130 wounded—amounting to a third of the male population aged 18-50. The remaining two-thirds have overwhelmingly been absorbed into the army or militias

The deputy head of Sudan's opposition Umma Party was sentenced to a week in prison on Sunday for demonstrating against the president, a party official and a lawyer said, as activists protested against emergency laws imposed last month.

Mariam Sadiq al-Mahdi, also a daughter of Umma leader Sadiq al-Mahdi, was among 16 people detained while demonstrating in front of Umma's headquarters in Omdurman, across the Nile from the capital Khartoum, defence lawyer Khalafallah Hussein was cited by Reuters as saying.

Another of Sadiq al-Mahdi's daughters, Rabah, was also arrested and fined 500 pounds, according to Hussein.

Egyptian authorities have arrested a retired general after denying him permission to run in presidential elections in March. Sami Anan was the last challenger seen as a potential threat to President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, himself a former military chief, whose re-election is considered almost certain. The arrest of Anan, a former member of Egypt’s supreme military council for armed forces, appears to be a calculated move to push him out of the race. It followed a declaration by Scaf that accused him of election violations and said he would be “summoned for interrogation in front of specialised personnel”. “I hold the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi entirely responsible for his wellbeing,” said Dr Mahmoud Refaat, a spokesman for Anan’s campaign abroad. “Yesterday 30 members of campaign were also arrested as well as some of their family members. It’s not known where any of them are being held.”

Anan previously stated he wished to save Egypt from “wrong policies”, and was seen as a favourite to challenge Sisi on the campaign trail, even attracting support from members of the banned Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood. He later made the controversial choice to appoint the country’s former top auditor Hisham Geneina as one of his two running mates. Geneina was sentenced to a year in prison in 2016 after accusing the Egyptian government of rampant corruption costing the country billions of dollars.

interrogated on charges of running for election without prior approval from the military, forging documents stating that he had left the military and “inciting against the armed forces”.

Police transferred an Egyptian activist who was arrested upon arrival at the Cairo airport from Italy to a “less favorable” detention facility Thursday, a local rights group said, just as his parents showed up for visiting hours.Officials detained Patrick George Zaki, 28, a human rights advocate and student at the University of Bologna in Italy, after he landed in Cairo for a brief trip home.When Zaki’s parents arrived at the police station to catch a first glimpse of their son, police directed them to another, more crowded facility a short drive away. By the time they found Zaki, less than a minute remained of visiting hours, his lawyer said.

Zaki has told his lawyers that while in custody he has been blindfolded, beaten and tortured with electric shocks while interrogated about his activism. There was no immediate response from Egypt’s Interior Ministry about the allegations.

accusations of spreading fake news and calling for unauthorized protests

“We are victims of a campaign of arrests because we are an organization that has invested and contributed a lot to Hirak,” a member of RAJ’s executive board told Al-Monitor, speaking on the condition of anonymity following Fersaoui’s arrest. “Yet, RAJ is not the only target of these arbitrary arrests, but rather the civil society as a whole.”

an upsurge of repression against prominent leaders and other activists with Hirak, including large-scale arbitrary arrests

escalation is taking place two months before presidential elections called for Dec. 12 by the interim president, Abdelkader Bensalah, and pushed for by the army.

The family of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the British Egyptian political prisoner on a hunger and water strike in prison, was informed by Egyptian officials Thursday that he has undergone “a medical intervention with the knowledge of a judicial authority,” they said.

The United States is a close ally of Egypt and provides more than $1 billion in military aid to the country each year, but has repeatedly criticized its human rights record. Abdel Fattah’s family has made repeated public appeals to the White House to intervene in the case.

Abdel Fattah, who is 40 and a once-prominent activist in the 2011 revolution, has been in and out of prison for the past decade on charges human rights groups decry as attempts to silence dissent. He was sentenced to five years in prison last year after he was found guilty of “spreading false news undermining national security.”

(Reuters) - Tunisia's ruling Islamists dissolved the government and promised rapid elections in a bid to restore calm after the killing of an opposition leader sparked the biggest street protests since the revolution two years ago. The prime minister's announcement late on Wednesday that an interim cabinet of technocrats would replace his Islamist-led coalition came at the end of a day which had begun with the gunning down of Chokri Belaid, a left-wing lawyer with a modest political following but who spoke for many who fear religious radicals are stifling freedoms won in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.

In Tunis, the crowd set fire to the headquarters of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party which won the most seats in an legislative election 16 months ago.

Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali of Ennahda spoke on television on Wednesday evening to declare that weeks of talks among the various political parties on reshaping the government had failed and that he would replace his entire cabinet with non-partisan technocrats until elections could be held as soon as possible.

According to reports of the activist Facebook group Le patrimoine archéologique syrien en danger, all six UNESCO World Heritage sites in Syria have been damaged, major museum collections at Homs and Hama have been looted, and dozens of ancient tells have been obliterated by shelling. In Iraq, recent media stories recount ISIS fighters’ use of antiquities to raise revenues. So-called blood antiquities function as cash-cows, fetching high prices from unscrupulous collectors and netting a handsome cut for ISIS. As devastating as this news is, Syria and Iraq are simply additional chapters in the long-running story wherein conflict is characterised by a two-fold assault on humanity: human bodies themselves as well as the objects and sites that people create and infuse with cultural meaning.

So-called blood antiquities function as cash-cows, fetching high prices from unscrupulous collectors and netting a handsome cut for ISIS.

The destruction of human communities is incomplete without cultural violence. This was the conclusion of lawyer and human rights advocate Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-born jurist who coined the term “genocide” and fought successfully for its recognition by international legal bodies as a crime. In Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944), he argued: By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group…[It signifies] a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. (Lemkin 1944: 80) Among the “essential foundations” of the life of human societies, Lemkin argued, were cultural sites, objects, and practices. The Holocaust galvanised his human rights work, but it was the tragic case of Turkish Armenians during the beginning decades of the twentieth century that served as the basis for Lemkin’s theory of genocide.

An officer from the morality police who wished to remain anonymous confirmed to Mada Masr that morality police officers heavily monitor LGBT people using the community’s dating websites and internet forums. He stated that it is common practice for a police officer to engage with someone online, agree to meet him or her in person, and then send the messages to the public prosecution to issue a warrant of arrest.

Grindr, a dating app commonly used by gay men, released a warning in 2014 saying that Egyptian police may be using the application to entrap individuals and warned users to take steps to protect their identities. Solidarity with Egypt LGBT estimates that between 2013 and 2015, 53 percent of charges leveled against LGBT individuals featured the use of websites and social media to entrap people.

The case against the 11 individuals included a long list of accusations related to debauchery. While being gay is not technically criminalized under the Egyptian penal code, LGBT individuals are often targeted through debauchery laws. Debauchery carries a maximum sentence of three years. However, Abdel Hameed says that, in cases against LGBT individuals, it is common for the prosecution to list several accusations related to debauchery to increase the prison sentence.

Zarea has not been officially notified if CIHRS is involved in the case, he said, though he has read in local media outlets that the organization is indeed being investigated.Eid told Mada Masr that he also only found out about the case through the media, and has not been formally notified of the investigations.“The travel ban and the media reports are all I know about this case,” Eid said.Eid claimed that both he and his lawyer have attempted several times to find out why he was banned from travel, but to no avail. “I paid the fees for the request, but the officer told me, ‘I won’t tell you anything’,” Eid alleged.

“It is being regulated in a political manner, and the media is also playing a role,” Zarea told Mada Masr. “First a smear campaign is launched in the media, and then verdicts are issued.”

travel bans — which can remain in place for a year or longer — are often issued without notifying those implicated as to why, or if they are facing criminal charges. Travel bans and trials are often announced in the media before the defendants are informed, Zarea added, pointing to the example of Abdel Fattah, who learned about her travel ban from the talk show host Ahmed Moussa. “Is the state embarrassed to tell them that they are banned from travel,” he asked, “so it sends Ahmed Moussa to tell them?” 

Tunisia’s deputies have managed to achieve something unique in the Arab world: making the parliament the centrepiece of political discourse and power

Though having almost no parliamentarian tradition, Tunisians have succeeded in creating, defending, and pushing their interim assembly that, despite major problems, transformed into a real parliament

With 37% of all votes, Ennahda clearly bypassed the Congress for the Republic Party (CPR) of state president Moncef Marzouki (8,7%) and Ettakatol led by NCA president Mostapha Ben Jafaar (7,03%) and secured more votes (1.5 mio.) than all other parties and independent candidates in parliament together (1.26 mio.)

There are several reasons the National Dialogue succeeded, including strong popular and international pressure to avoid the Egyptian scenario. A key factor was that the Quartet had real support in Tunisian society. The UGTT, despite years of dictatorship, had managed to build a national network of over 400,000 members and today has the ability to call for massive general strikes that can paralyse the economy. While the UGTT represents labour, the UTICA represents capital, the influential and moneyed business elite. The human rights league and the lawyers’ syndicate are veterans of the opposition to the Ben Ali regime and played an important role in the 2011 revolution. Together, these four organisations had both moral clout and political brawn; they could mobilise public opinion and steer the national debate. The UGTT and UTICA, precisely because they are often at loggerheads on labour issues, made for a particularly compelling duo in jointly pushing an agenda of compromise.

the Quartet’s leadership in effect provided a vehicle for negotiation, neutralising the opposition’s hardliners who might have backed more radical options, such as an outright coup

In a region where civil-society groups often face repression and are marginalised, the Tunisian example shows the value of having actors from outside formal politics play a role in moments of crisis. No one elected the National Dialogue Quartet, but they nonetheless represented something real: the desire of many Tunisians to resolve their differences in a peaceful and constructive way