Alkarama for Human Rights, 10 August 2007

Alkarama for Human Rights wishes to draw attention to the case of Mr. Al Rabassi.  Arrested at home on 3 January 2003 by Internal Security agents, he was condemned to 15 years’ criminal imprisonment by an exceptional court for having sent an email criticising the President.  The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion on 30 August 2005 deeming Mr. Al Rabassi’s detention arbitrary.

Good news for human rights activists and victims of abuses in the Arab world, especially those living in Britain: the British courts have ruled today that it is not possible to hand over Libyan nationals to the Libyan government, due to its being a government that not only has a horrifying human rights record but also lacks any credibility, whose leader, Qaddafi, cannot be trusted.  This judgement is a severe blow to the British Prime Minister and the extremists in the British government who had relied on the memoranda of understanding that they had signed with Arab regimes, in particular with Algeria, Libya, and Jordan, allowing them, in the name of “the war or terror”, to hand over opposition members to the regimes of these states.

Alkarama for Human Rights, 13 July 2007 

Over the last few weeks Alkarama has been contacting UN bodies, specifically the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Working Group on Enforced Disappearance, and the Special Rapporteur on Torture, regarding the brothers Ibrahim and Usamah al-Jadhran, born 1983 and 1985, who were arrested at their home in Ajdabiya (170 km south of Benghazi) on 29 June 2005 by the Libyan Internal Security, and tortured  in the Internal Security Centre at Ajdabiya by two locally well-known officers.