On 24 April 2015, Alkarama sent a request for Opinion to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) regarding the arbitrary detention of two Jordanian citizens, Bassem Al Rawabedah and Thabet Assaf, arrested for having organised and participated in a peaceful demonstration against the French journal Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, on 16 January 2015. Both men were arrested by the Preventive Security Services, a force under the control of the Public Security Directorate and subsequently handed over to the General Intelligence Services.
27-year-old Assaf was arrested on 15 January 2015 in the Abdali district of the Jordanian capital, which contains some of the city's most important government and military locations, the Parliament, Palace of Justice and numerous embassies, while45-year-old Al Rawabedah was arrested two days later in the Al Nazha district of Amman. The men were accused by the Prosecutor of the State Security Court of "incitement against the political regime" on the basis of article 149 of the Penal Code, a charge increasingly used against activists by the Jordanian authorities.
Transferred to the General Intelligence Directorate headquarters in Amman, both men spent their first week in solitary confinement, detained incommunicado – not allowed to receive the visit of their families or lawyer. On 25 January 2015,they were transferred to the Al Juwaida prison, east of Amman, infamous for the practice of torture, where they their lawyer said they were subjected to "severe psychological pressure". A week later, on 31 January 2015, they were moved again to the Hashemieh prison in Zarqa, 15km north of Amman, before being transferred one last time to Marka prison, northeast of the capital, on 20 March 2015. Whereas Rawabedah is still detained in Marka prison, Assaf was released on bail on 26 March and awaiting his trail, scheduled for 29 April 2015.
Members of the Islamic Jordanian Youth Movement – a group advocating for reforms and larger freedoms, which regularly organises social protests in the country – the two political activists had already been arrested in June 2013 for their participation in demonstrations and detained for five months also for "incitement against the political regime". Following Alkarama's communication after their first arrest and detention in 2013, the WGAD had adopted an Opinion (No. 53/2013) considering their detention arbitrary since it was resulting from the legitimate exercise of their right to freedom of expressionand peaceful assembly.
Irrespective this Opinion and of their obligations under international human rights law, the Jordanian authorities arrested Assaf and Al Rawabedah again for the very same reasons – the exercise of their legitimate rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which Jordan ratified in March 1975. This is further confirmed by their lawyer stating that during the first court hearings, political statements the men had made on their Facebook accounts were discussed at length.
"We are not only concerned about the arbitrary detention of Rawabedah and Assaf, but also the fact that they will be tried before the State Security Court, which works closely with the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) and is made up of two military and one civilian judge, all appointed by the Prime Minister," said Julia Legner, Alkarama's Case Officer for the Mashreq region. "The State Security Court, which has jurisdiction over crimes deemed to harm Jordan's internal and external security, has such little respect for fair trials procedures that the Human Rights Committee asked for its abolition in 2010."
Alkarama therefore asked the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to issue a second Opinion as to the arbitrary nature of their detention, requesting the Jordanian authorities to put an immediate end to their arbitrary detention by releasing them or, at the very least, by granting them a fair trial. The Jordanian authorities should put an end to the judicial harassment of political activists in the country without delay.
For more information or an interview, please contact the media team at media@alkarama.org (Dir: +41 22 734 1007 Ext: 810)