Amnesty International on human rights abuse in the Arab states
Saudi Arabia, Politics, 5/24/2006

Amnesty International just said about the state of human rights in the Arab states that "With few exceptions, perpetrators of human rights abuses continued to benefit from impunity as governments failed to hold them to account and ensure justice for their victims. In many countries in the region, security and intelligence services were given free rein to detain suspects for long periods, often holding them incommunicado and without charge and exposing them to torture and ill-treatment, confident that they did so with official acquiescence and without fear of intervention by the courts."


Amnesty International "Detainees were frequently tortured in Syria in pre-trial detention. In Egypt and Tunisia, defendants frequently complained of torture when they were eventually brought to trial only for courts to dismiss their allegations out of hand without investigation."

Amnesty International said "The problem was exacerbated by the continued prevalence of exceptional courts, including military courts empowered to try civilians. In Egypt and Syria, such courts were maintained under long-standing states of emergency. Special courts were also used to try and sentence political suspects in Lebanon and Oman. In Libya, the General People’s Congress abolished the People’s Court, a notoriously unfair special court that had previously sentenced many critics and opponents of the government to long prison terms or death. Despite this, neither in Libya nor in most other countries in the Middle East and North Africa could it be said that there was an independent judiciary, especially in cases having a political or security aspect."

Amnesty International said "The issue of impunity for past grave abuses came into sharp focus during the year. In Algeria, the government held a national referendum to win support for its plan to extend an amnesty to those responsible for the thousands of political killings, “disappearances” and widespread torture that were so much a feature of the internal conflict that raged from the early 1990s."

Amnesty International said "In neighbouring Morocco, however, an Equity and Reconciliation Commission appointed by King Mohamed VI completed its inquiries into “disappearances” and other violations committed between 1956 and 1999, and at the end of the year submitted its final report. Although its statutes categorically excluded the identification of individual perpetrators, the Commission represented a unique initiative within the region, one that appeared likely to clarify a good number of cases of past abuse and ensure both official acknowledgement of, and the payment of reparation for, some of the suffering to which victims and their relatives had been exposed. The independent Moroccan Human Rights Association, meanwhile, organized its own informal public hearings in which some victims named individuals they held responsible for past violations against them."

Amnesty International said "In Iraq, justice continued to be denied to countless victims of abuse. However, former President Saddam Hussain was finally called to account for some of the crimes committed when he was in power, crimes whose enormity was reflected following the discovery of mass graves in 2003. Facing charges related to only one of the many incidents of killings for which his government was believed responsible, it remained to be seen whether he would receive a fair trial. The initial conduct of the trial did not inspire confidence. Yet, for a once-powerful leader to have to answer to some of his victims was a breakthrough for a region in which impunity had been well-entrenched for so long."

Amnesty International said "the killings and “disappearances” of thousands of Syrian and Lebanese nationals in past decades remained almost entirely uninvestigated."

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