Published date: 24 February 2021 11:03 UTC | Last update: 1 month 2 weeks ago
Authoritarian regimes use of the detainee card as a bargaining chip is similar to the use of civilians as human shields during wars and conflicts
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (AFP)
After she spent more than 1,000 days in prison for defending a woman s right to drive, Saudi authorities recently released activist Loujain al-Hathloul.
The 32-year-old, who was previously held for more than two months after trying to drive into Saudi Arabia from the UAE in 2014, thus lost nearly three years of her freedom, fighting for something the government later legalised.
Feb 16 (Reuters) - The United States is looking into reports that Egypt has detained relatives of prominent Egyptian-American human rights activist Mohamed Soltan, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Tuesday. We have and we continue to engage the Egyptian government on human rights concerns, and we take seriously all allegations of arbitrary arrest or detention, Price told a news briefing.
Soltan s organization, The Freedom Initiative, in a statement said six members of his family were detained on Sunday by plain-clothed Egyptian State Security forces as part of a campaign of retaliatory aggression.
Soltan is calling attention to the impunity and disregard for human rights under the current Egyptian regime. Now the Egyptian regime is arresting his relatives to try to intimidate him into silence, his lawyer Eric Lewis said, according to the group s statement.
BBC News, Cairo
Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen were almost baffled by the prosecutor’s move to issue arrest warrants for Mohammed Badie.
Mr Badie is the movement’s general or supreme guide, to whom every new member is required to pledge an oath of allegiance. So, his detention would enrage the thousands of Brotherhood supporters camped outside Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, where they are vowing to remain until President Mohammed Morsi is released and reinstated.
Mr Badie and a handful of other Brotherhood leaders escaped arrest when the army deposed Mr Morsi a week ago. He has since addressed the crowd at the mosque and vowed not to give an inch until the democratically elected government is restored.