January 10, 2008
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
Via Facsimile: 202-456-2461
Dear President Bush:
The Committee to Protect Journalists is writing to you in advance of your expected meetings next week with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. We would like to draw your attention to the ongoing imprisonment of two journalist bloggers as well as to other restrictions on the press in each country.
We hope you will use your visits with both leaders to express deep reservations—both in public and in private—about the unjust imprisonment of our colleagues and the ongoing harassment many journalists face.
On December 10, Saudi security agents detained Fouad Ahmed al-Farhan, a young Saudi blogger who runs Alfarhan.org, a popular pro-reform Web site that publishes social and political commentary. Saudi officials have been virtually silent about the detention; a Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman said that al-Farhan was being questioned “about violating non-security regulations.” Throughout his one-month detention, Saudi and other Arab bloggers have rallied on behalf of al-Farhan, deploring his detention without charge and calling for his release.
In an e-mail sent to friends prior to his arrest, al-Farhan explained that he had received a phone call from the Saudi Interior Ministry instructing him to prepare himself “to be picked up in the coming two weeks” for questioning by a high-ranking official. He also stated in the e-mail that he believed he was being summoned “because I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia and they think I’m running an online campaign promoting their issue.” In one of his last posts before his detention, al-Farhan sharply criticized 10 influential Saudi business, religious, and media figures.
Young bloggers like Fouad al-Farhan have taken advantage of the Internet to circumvent tight government control of the Saudi media. The government frequently reins in criticism by dismissing or blacklisting critical writers and by pressuring journalists behind the scenes. In the face of such restrictions, these bloggers have helped expand social and political debate, exercising their right to free speech in a way that is otherwise impossible in their countries.
In Egypt, another reformist online journalist, Abdel Karim Suleiman, remains in jail, serving a four-year jail term for allegedly insulting Islam and President Mubarak. His was the first prison term given to a blogger in Egypt. Suleiman, a former student atCairo’s Al-Azhar University, the preeminent higher learning institution in Sunni Islam, had frequently accused this state-run religious university of promoting extremist ideas. He also criticized President Mubarak, whom he referred to as a dictator. Eventually expelled from Al-Azhar in 2006, Suleiman was arrested in November 2006 and charged for his online writings.
Suleiman’s imprisonment was a prelude to a surge in attacks on independent Egyptian journalists and bloggers over the last year. Several have been criminally prosecuted or convicted in politically motivated trials, among them leading independent editor Ibrahim Eissa, who faces possible prison time for articles he wrote about President Mubarak’s health.
In a speech before a group of international political dissidents in Prague last June, you restated your administration’s policy to support democracy worldwide by saying, “My message to all those who suffer under tyranny is this: We will never excuse your oppressors. We will always stand for your freedom.” You added that the U.S. is using its influence to press close allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia “to move toward freedom,” and that it “will continue to press nations like these to open up their political systems, and give greater voice to their people.”
“Inevitably, this creates tension,” you stated. “But our relationships with these countries are broad enough and deep enough to bear it.”
It is in this spirit that we encourage you to urge King bdullah and President Mubarak to do everything in their powers to ensure that our colleagues are released and that other journalists are able to work freely, without the threat of intimidation and harassment. Such a forceful stand would both help support a free press and also bolster your administration’s policy of holding its allies to account when they violate the fundamental right to freedom of expression.
Thank you for your attention to these important matters.
Joel Simon
Executive Director
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Reporters Without Borders and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) wrote today to the King of Saudi Arabia, Abdallah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, to request the release of blogger Ahmad Fouad al-Farhan, who has been held for the past month.
Letter sent on 10 January to the King of Saudi Arabia, Abdallah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, by Reporters Without Borders General-Secretary Robert Ménard and HRinfo Executive-Director Gamal Eid.
“Your Majesty,
Reporters Without Borders, an international press freedom organisation, and the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, HRinfo, would like to share with you their concern about the case of Ahmad Fouad Al-Farhan, a blogger who has been held by your Ministry of Interior since 10 December.
HRinfo issued a statement calling on the Saudi government to immediately release Mr. Farhan and to explain the reasons for his arbitrary detention. However, there has been no response from your government and our two organisations would like to know the reason for your government’s silence on this matter.
US assistant secretary of state Sean McCormack raised this issue with your government during a visit to your Kingdom on 3 January. We recommend transparency as the best response and we hope for a positive evolution in this case, which has raised a considerable stir in the international blogosphere and in the media. An online protest staged by prominent organisations on 6 January was a great success and showed the level of blogosphere support for Mr. Farhan. Articles are being posted every day about his plight.
It would be a shame if the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s image were to be marred by this arbitrary detention, in which there are no grounds for any charges, as the Ministry of Interior’s spokesman, Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, implicitly acknowledged when he said he had no additional information about the reasons for Mr. Farhan’s arrest.
Access to more than 400,000 websites hosted in Saudi Arabia and abroad is currently blocked in the Kingdom, including websites specialising in human rights and civil liberties. Censorship is visible in Saudi Arabia and is openly defended in the name of the protection of Islamic moral obligations.
We urge you to order Mr. Farhan’s immediate and unconditional release and to reiterate the undertakings you have given on the reforms initiated in the Kingdom, which is still considered to be one of the most repressive countries as regards Internet filtering policies. His release would be seen as evidence of your will to improve respect for free expression.
We trust you will give our appeal your careful consideration.”
Source: Reporters Without Borders
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by Amy Glass on Sunday, 06 January 2008, Arabian Business
Reporters without Borders plans to launch a petition this week calling for the release Saudi blogger Ahmad Fouad Al-Farhan, the press freedom advocate group toldArabianBusiness.com on Sunday.
Clothilde Le Coz, head of the internet freedom desk at Reporters without Borders, said the group also planned to write to the minister of interior over Al-Farhans’s imprisonment.
Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrested the popular 32-year-old blogger on December 10 for violating “non-security regulations”, but his detention was not made public until last Tuesday.
Al-Farhan’s blog – Searching for freedom, dignity, justice, equality, shoura and all the rest of lost Islamic values – has posted a letter, allegedly from Al-Farhan, which states he believes he was arrested because he “wrote about political prisoners in Saudi Arabia”.
Reporters without Borders has condemned Al-Farhan detention, which is believed to be the first arrest of an online critic in the kingdom.
“The reforms and the opening announced by King Abdallah Ibn Al-Saud have yet to have any impact on the lives of Saudis, including those who openly express their disagreement with government policies,” the group said in a statement last week.
“After blocking the news website Elaph and the leading blog publishing service www.blogger.com, the authorities have now directly targeted a blogger for the first time.”
Saudi Arabia is on the Reporters without Borders list of ‘13 internet enemies’ and was ranked 148th out of 169 countries in the Reporters without Borders world press freedom index that was published in October 2007.
The Saudi government’s official internet blacklist is believed to affect more than 400,000 websites, ranging from the sites of political organisations to those of unrecognised Islamist movements and pornography sites.
According to Reporters without Borders, Saudi Arabia does not hide its online censorship.
“Censorship concentrates on pornographic content, but it also targets opposition websites, Israeli publications, or sites dealing with homosexuality. Blogs also pose a problem to the Saudi censors. Last year they tried to completely block access to the country’s biggest blog tool, blogger.com. But now they just block the blogs that are deemed unacceptable,” the group said on its website.
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By MIDDLE EAST TIMES, January 7th, 2008
Fouad al-Farhan may not be a household name, but U.S. President George W. Bush is bound to receive more than an earful about the blogger from Saudi Arabia when he visits the kingdom later this week as part of an eight-day Mideast tour that will also take him to Jerusalem, and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Then again, the U.S. president might not get to hear about Farhan, who was jailed after calling for political reform in Saudi Arabia.
Political reform in the Middle East? Yes. The kind calling for greater freedom of expression and of participation in one’s government? Yes. Isn’t this just what the American president has been clamoring for since he discovered the Middle East the day after 9/11 when he set out on his own jihad, or crusade, to bring democracy to the region?
Bush and his entourage, who are on a quest for democracy in the Middle East almost as ardently as Indiana Jones was when looking for the lost ark, will have the golden opportunity to put to practice what they preach.
A Saudi blogger in jail for standing up for his rights should come across as music to Bush’s ears. This is right up his alley. The question is will the president even raise the issue with the Saudis?
The snag, though, is that a jailed blogger is not necessarily the sort of topic the Saudi authorities will want to discuss at any great length during the president’s visit on Jan. 14-15. Nor is it really going to be a matter likely to figure on the topics of conversation between the U.S. president and his Saudi interlocutors. The Saudis will say it is an internal affair, that the Saudi blogger is a “terrorist,” or that he incited, or called for violence, or for the overthrow of the monarchy, or …
Al-Farhan, whose name in Arabic means “the joyful one,” is certainly far from that. Last week Saudi security forces showed up at his house in Jeddah and took him to an undisclosed location. Until now, it is still not known where he is being detained, and even his family has not been told where he is.
The United States said Thursday it raised the issue of his arrest with the authorities in the ultra-conservative kingdom underlining Washington’s commitment to freedom of expression.
General Mansur al-Turki, a Saudi interior ministry spokesman told the Jeddah daily newspaper Arab News that Farhan, was being held for “interrogation for violating non-security regulations.”
Huh?
Saudi bloggers launched a campaign supporting Farhan. They were in turn joined by international and Saudi non-governmental organizations, including the Arabic Network for Human Rights, Reporters sans Frontiers (Reporters without Borders) and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
But the voice with the most clout is that of the U.S. president. Will Mr. Bush speak up in defending the rights of Saudis? Stay tuned.
You can visit Farhan’s blog at www.alfarhan.org.
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By Ebtihal Mubarak | Arab News
JEDDAH, 6 January 2008 — Authorities yesterday allowed a family member to meet detained Saudi blogger Fouad Al-Farhan in prison, Arab News has learned.
Al-Farhan’s father-in-law met him for one hour inside at Jeddah’s Dahban Prison where the Saudi blogger has been held for the past 27 days.
“His spirits are high,” said one of his blogger friends. “He hasn’t been told of the charges (against him). He said he’s interrogated for 15 minutes every day.”
Until yesterday, Al-Farhan’s family had been denied access to the 32-year-old Jeddah-based owner of a small IT business who runs a web journal that discusses Saudi social and political issues.
Urging the government to explain the legal procedures and justifications for detaining Al-Farhan, Hussein Al-Sharif, head of the Western Region office of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), said earlier yesterday that the Saudi blogger should have access to a lawyer.
Al-Sharif, a law professor at King Abdul Aziz University, cited Article 4 of the criminal procedure law: “Any accused person shall have the right to a lawyer or (other) representative to defend him during the investigation and trial stages.”
Citing Article 119 of the Saudi law of criminal procedure, Al-Sharif said that investigators could legally deny the detainee’s right to contact his or her family for up to 60 days “if the interests of the investigation so requires without prejudice to the right of the accused to communicate with his representative or attorney”.
While authorities have not outlined the reason for his detention, Al-Farhan said prior to his arrest that he drew the attention of the Interior Ministry for comments he made in defense of a group of academics that were arrested last year.
Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, Interior Ministry spokesperson, denied a report that ran on CNN recently saying Al-Farhan would soon be released. “He is being interrogated and there is no update on his case,” he told Arab News recently, a week after he explained that the blogger had been “detained for interrogation” for “violating non-security regulations”.
“He is not imprisoned,” said Al-Turki. “No one enters jail without a court order. He is being held for interrogation.”
Al-Sharif said that what Al-Turki said is legally correct. The General Investigation and Prosecution Authority (the Saudi equivalent of an attorney general’s office) is allowed to detain people for up to six months, but that during this time the detainee is supposed to have access to a legal advocate.
“In these six months the detainee must be aware of the charges brought against him, allow him his right to an attorney, not be abused, and, most important, the right of a fair and just trial,” said Al-Sharif.
Al-Farhan stated on his blog that the purpose of his commentary is to discuss what is being addressed on the “Saudi Street” and behind closed doors because the media “rarely tells the truth.” In addition to calling for more public participation in governance, as well as reforms to government ministries, Al-Farhan condemned terrorism and extremism.
The blogging community is planning a “Day of Blog Silence”, asking the international blog community to post a banner graphic with Al-Farhan’s picture and to refrain from making posts today.
“It’s a world wide call for all bloggers not only in Saudi,” said one Saudi blogger who runs the online campaign defending her colleague.
Both the governmental Human Rights Commission (HRC) and the NSHR stressed to Arab News yesterday that they are working on the case. The NSHR said it sent a letter to the Interior Ministry asking about the circumstance in which Al-Farhan, a father of two, was arrested.
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