The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) has recently released its Opinion on the case of Adam Al Natour, a 21-year-old Polish and Jordanian student who was sentenced to four years of imprisonment by the State Security Court after a flawed trial during which confessions he was forced to sign under torture were used against him. In the decision, the UN experts qualified his detention as "arbitrary" and requested the Jordanian authorities to immediately release him and to open an investigation into his allegations of torture.
On 12 August 2015, Adam Al Natour was helping his father in his garage in Al Bayader, Amman, when 15 members of the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) – the country's intelligence agency – arrested him. He was then took to the GID premises where he was detained incommunicado for three weeks. When he was finally allowed to meet with his father, he reported having been beaten and subjected to electric shocks.

In late August 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), a group of independent experts, adopted Opinion n°42/2016; in which they qualify the detention of Ahmed Yousry Zaky, an Egyptian student who was arrested on 5 May 2015, as "arbitrary". After having reviewed the communication sent by Alkarama on 11 May 2016, and faced with the lack of answer from the Egyptian Government, the UN experts ruled that the Egyptian authorities was violating the student's fundamental rights and consequently called upon them to immediately release him. Importantly, the Opinion further manifests the Working Group's concern over a pattern of arbitrary detention in the country.

Ten years ago, on 1 November 2006, Jordan enacted the "Prevention of Terrorism Act", in response to the 2005 hotel bombings in Amman that left 60 people dead. In 2014, faced with threats stemming from the spillover of the Syrian war, the law was amended and broadened to include nonviolent acts, in an attempt to legitimise the government's crackdown on peaceful expression and assembly. Journalists, political opponents, freedom of expression advocates and human rights defenders have since been put to trial under the pretext of "terrorism".