In Brief Ilham Tohti, a public Uyghur intellectual and professor of economics at the Central Minorities University, was detained at the Beijing Capital International Airport on his way to the US on February 2, 2013. Tohti was later sentenced to life imprisonment on September 23, 2014 on charges of "separatism" by a court in China's Xinjiang region. Case History Tohti was with his daughter when police stopped them during security checks at the airport and prevented them from b

In Brief Status: Released In October 2019, Iranian authorities have released Hamid Babaei, 36, a PhD student at the University of Liege in Belgium, who was detained in August 2013 shortly after his return to Tehran and sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “communicating with hostile foreign governments and spying.” Throughout his incarceration, Babaei stated repeatedly that he was imprisoned for refusing to operate as an informant in Belgium for Iran’s Intelligenc

In Brief In August 2008 Mostafa Alavi was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by an Iranian court for “plotting against the regime.” He had reportedly been held in Gohardasht Prison since March 2007 and initially stood trial in January 2008. Case History Before his arrest, Alavi ran a nongovernmental organization called the Iranian Elite Association, which sought to boost interaction between educated Iranians and global academic centers. He suffers from diabetes and heart prob

In Brief Yashar Darolshafa, a graduate student of Sociology at Tehran University and the former secretary of the Islamic Reformist Students' Association of Qazvin International University, was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security” and “founding or leading an organization aimed to disrupt national security.” Case History First arrested in 2009, Darolshafa was given the prison sentence in August 2010 by Branch 15 of

In Brief In June 2013 sociologist and political activist Saeed Madani was sentenced to six years in prison and ten years in exile on charges of “propaganda against the state” and “acting against national security.” Mandani been held without charge since January 7, 2012. Case History Security forces arrested Saeed Madani in 2012 for his political activism and membership in the now-banned Nationalist-Religious Alliance political opposition group. Following Madani's arrest, he s

In Brief Sidig Noreen Ali Abdalla, a professor at West Kordofan University who served as a supervisor of the Greater Darfur Students' Association, was arrested on January 16, 2014 for his alleged advocacy on the situation in Darfur. Formal charges have yet to be pressed. Case History Despite the lack of charges, Abdalla has been detained without charge by the Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) in El-Obeid, town in the state of North Kordofan. The peri

In Brief (updated April 5, 2021) Abdul Jalil Al-Singace, a prominent human rights activist in Bahrain, was first arrested on March 17, 2011 during the Arab Spring revolution, and charged with plotting to "topple the government.” He was sentenced to life in Jau Prison on June 22, 2011. Since 2011, Al-Singace has been in Jau Prison—Bahrain’s largest prison, where the lack of adequate sanitation led to a scabies outbreak in December 2011—on a life sentence for allegedly “plottin

In Brief Abdul Kareem Yousef Al-Khodr, a professor of Comparative Jurisprudence at Qassim University in Saudi Arabia, was sentenced in June 2013 to eight years in prison and given a 10-year travel ban. Case History In February 2013, when the first session of the trial was set to begin, Al-Khodr authorized his lawyer, Abdulaziz Al-Shubaili, to attend in his place. In spite of repeated pleas to push back the date of the trial, supported by evidence of Al-Khodr’s father’s deteri