News – MENA Rights Group

Today marks 100 days in detention for Egyptian filmmaker and screenwriter Omar Salah Marei. MENA Rights Group joins 19 partner organisations in calling for his immediate and unconditional release.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UN WGAD), a panel of independent legal experts that rules on individual cases of unlawful detention worldwide, has issued a landmark decision finding that Israel’s detention of Palestinian paediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is arbitrary, and has called for his immediate release. The opinion, adopted following a request submitted by MENA Rights Group, marks the first time the body has ruled on the detention of a Palestinian from Gaza held under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law.

MENA Rights Group joins 7 other NGOs in an urgent call on Saudi Arabia to immediately release medical doctor and Wikipedia administrator, Osama Khalid, arrested in 2020 for peaceful online expression and now sentenced to 14 years in prison.

An award-winning Kuwaiti-American journalist has been detained since March 3 for sharing publicly available, verified footage. Journalism is not a crime.

MENA Rights Group joins 40 human rights organisations calling on Egyptian authorities to immediately release prominent activist, poet and political writer Ahmed Douma from pretrial detention.

EuroMed Rights, Human Rights Watch and MENA Rights Group have addressed a letter to Pope XIV ahead of his historic visit to Algeria, scheduled from 13 to 15 April 2026. In the letter, the organisations urge him to raise, both in private with the Algerian authorities and in his public communications, a number of pressing human rights concerns documented in the country. These relate, in particular, to violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief affecting religious minorities, the ongoing crackdown on civic space, and the serious violations perpetrated against refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an Opinion qualifying the detention of Saudi protestors Mohammad Labbad and Mohammad Abdullah al-Faraj as arbitrary and in violation of international human rights standards.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an Opinion finding that the detention and death sentences of three Egyptian nationals by Saudi authorities for drug-related crimes was arbitrary and that their subsequent executions amounted to an arbitrary deprivation of life.

À la suite d’une plainte déposée par MENA Rights Group, le Groupe de travail sur la détention arbitraire des Nations unies a rendu un avis qualifiant la détention du défenseur des droits humains et de l’environnement Tahar Larbi d’arbitraire car contraire aux normes internationales en matière de droits humains.

MENA Rights Group joins 20 NGOs in calling for the release of Saudi human rights defender Abdulrahman al-Khalidi detained in Bulgaria since 2021.

MENA Rights Group joins the Free Hoda Abdelmoniem Campaign and 16 other human rights organizations in expressing deep concern over the continued arbitrary detention of lawyer and human rights defender Hoda Abdelmoniem, who has now spent seven years behind bars despite serious and life-threatening health condition.

MENA Rights Group petitioned the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to rule on the arbitrary detention of Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safiya, abducted in Gaza and held without charge by Israel since December 2024.