Hussain Almoumen, a 21 year old Mechanical Engineering student at Bahrain Polytechnic, was arrested on Wednesday, January 4th 2012. His arrest came after the police raided his grandfather’s house after a rally commemorating one of the martyrs who was killed a few days before.

..see more at this great blog HERE

The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations: Witchcraft in Saudi Arabia
4 January, 2012 – by Filip Spagnoli – P.a.p.-Blog

danziger saudi witchcraft execution

Witchcraft is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia. Recently, another person was executed:

The Saudi Interior Ministry announced on Monday that it had beheaded a woman named Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser for practicing “witchcraft and sorcery.” The London-based al-Hayat newspaper, citing the chief of the religious police who arrested the woman after a report from a female investigator, claims Nasser was tricking people into paying $800 per session to have their illnesses cured. (source)

How do prosecutors prove that someone is in fact a witch?

[T]he bar for proving someone guilty isn’t very high. Witch hunting is fairly institutionalized in Saudi Arabia, with the country’s religious police running an Anti-Witchcraft Unit and a sorcery hotline to combat practices like astrology and fortune telling that are considered un-Islamic.

But institutionalized is not the same thing as codified. A top official in the kingdom’s Ministry of Justice told Human Rights Watch in 2008 that there is no legal definition for witchcraft (Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a penal code) or specific body of evidence that has probative value in witchcraft trials.

Instead, judges have wide latitude in interpreting Sharia law and sentencing suspected criminals. And Amnesty International claims these judges use witchcraft charges to arbitrarily ”punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion.” A Human Rights Watch researcher tells The Media Line that foreigners in particular are often the targets of sorcery accusations because of their traditional practices or, occasionally, because Saudi men facing charges of sexual harassment by domestic workers want to discredit their accusers.

The evidence arrayed against witchcraft suspects typically revolves around statements from accusers and suspicious personal belongings that suggest the supernatural, in a country where superstition is still widespread. (source)

In 2007, Saudi authorities beheaded an Egyptian pharmacist who had been accused by neighbors of casting spells to separate a man from his wife and placing Korans in mosque bathrooms. “He confessed to adultery with a woman and desecrating the Koran by placing it in the bathroom,” the Saudi Press Agency reported, adding that books on black magic, a candle with an incantation “to summon devils,” and “foul-smelling herbs” had been found in the pharmacist’s home. …source

Freshfields and leading silks advise Bahrain Govt on human rights reform

by: Suzi Ring – 5 January, 2012 – legalweek

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and two leading silks have won roles advising the Government of Bahrain on human rights reforms following the Arab Spring uprisings last year.

Sir Daniel Bethlehem QC from 20 Essex Street and Blackstone’s Sir Jeffrey Jowell QC are leading the advice to the Bahrain Government.

Freshfields international arbitration and public international law co-head Jan Paulsson – who is based in Bahrain – and City-based associate Tariq Baloch are also advising the state.

The appointments have been made following recommendations put forward by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) – an international committee set up last year in light of alleged torture of a number of Bahrain civilians during the uprising.

Bethlehem (pictured) and Jowell will be advising the Government with support from Freshfields on measures to improve accountability including the creation of a national body to investigate police officers responsible for torture, death or mistreatment of civilians.

Bethlehem was previously the primary legal adviser for the UK Foreign Office from 2006-11, before returning to private practice. Jowell was until recently the UK’s member of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, an advisory body of senior experts in constitutional law.

The Bahrain Government has pledged that the BICI’s recommendations will be implemented by the end of February this year with some reforms already in place. Key reforms include dropping charges against protestors related to freedom of speech; the removal of law enforcement and arrest powers from Bahrain’s National Security Agency; and the creation of a judicial panel to review convictions against protestors.

The news comes after Bahrain’s King Hamad Al-Khalifa visited the UK in December last year at which point Prime Minister David Cameron urged him to implement concrete reforms and offered UK support. …source

Guantanamo: Reopening Under New Management
by: Tom Parker – 5 January, 2012 – Human Rights Now

Next Wednesday will mark the tenth anniversary of the arrival of the first detainee at the military prison hurriedly erected on the arid scrubland of the United States Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In the past decade more than 775 individuals have made that journey, the vast majority have been released without charge after years of harsh captivity, 171 still remain – many cleared for release by the military but trapped by the restrictions placed on their resettlement by Congress.

The last prisoner arrived in Guantanamo in March 2008 but this spring we can expect the first new arrivals in four years to start trickling into the facility. The passage of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) means that Gitmo has now been reopened for business.

In tandem with opening up Guantanamo to new detainees, the NDAA has also given a shot in the arm to the moribund Military Commissions process. Military Commissions have heard six cases to conclusion since they were first established by the Bush administration in 2001.

By contrast Federal courts successfully prosecuted 523 terrorism-related defendants between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2009. Among those convicted were Al Qaeda members such as the shoe bomber Richard Reid and the Millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam. The Military Commissions convicted bin Laden’s cook.

Promoting an international global armed conflict paradigm as the most appropriate framework for confronting Al Qaeda has led the United States down some very dark paths in the past decade. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the military may have some pretty big hammers but not every problem is as straightforward to solve as pounding a nail.

Provoking the state to overreact, to undermine its own values and to discard human rights protections is a core staple of the terrorist playbook. It is a strategy you can find described in countless terrorist manuals dating back to the nineteenth century. And it is a trap into which the U.S. Government has fallen. …more