It is usually unclear how these clashes begin and how they escalate. When they do, they dramatically change the composition of the protest and the motivations behind it. But the latest round of violence, in Abbasseya, suggests that some protesters might be moving into a newly confrontational — and armed — form of resistance and self-defense, to the consternation of many activists.

The sit-in began on Friday, after supporters of disqualified presidential candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail moved their protest from in front of the Presidential Elections Commission to the Defense Ministry near Abbasseya. After some initial confrontations with plain-clothed individuals on Saturday, other political groups joined the sit-in, in front of Ain Shams University, which is adjacent to the ministry, to protest the military council’s rule and what they see as irregularities in the presidential elections process.

The introduction of violence to protests can change their character, making people behave in ways they might not normally. Allegations of protesters wreaking havoc among Abbasseya residents, vandalizing private property using weapons, and torturing those they captured, have only increased the rift between the protesters and their neighbors as well as marred the image of a “peaceful protest.”

Police officers, one of whom Mr Okuk said pointed a cocked pistol at him when he asked whether they had a warrant, took him to an abandoned house for four days. There he learnt the charge: a series of critical articles he had written constituted "offending the president".

As much as the official case of Mr Okuk cites only five articles he wrote as evidence of a crime, members of Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement - Democratic Change party (SPLM-DC) see it as a veiled political move. Mr Okuk's uncle is Lam Akol, a former rebel leader who broke away from South Sudan's dominant political party, the SPLM, to create SPLM-DC in 2009. Mr Akol was the only other contender for the presidency of South Sudan in the 2010 elections.

President Salva Kiir, who is also the head of the SPLM, publicly accused the SPLM-DC of supporting rebels who had attacked Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army from across a river in the South Sudan city of Malakal on April 27.

The SPLM-DC held news conference Wednesday, denying the charges and accusing the government of trying to build a case that the party had an armed wing, which would lead it to be deregistered under the political party law.

Aside from criticism of the president, the problem for journalists is trying to investigate corruption, said Nhial Bol, editor of the The Citizen, who has been arrested six times since South Sudan became independent last year.

The “vulnerability” referred to in CPJ’s blogpost is best seen when editor-in-chiefs are pressured into making decisions for the benefit of the newspaper and the dozens of employees . When the Al-Jareeda newspaper was confiscated on 27 and 29 March because it wouldn’t stop publishing the daily columns by Zuhair Al-Siraj, a Canada-based Sudanese columnist who is critical of the government in his writings, the financial losses forced the newspaper’s management to cancel the column.

“The press in Sudan is going through the most intense crackdown,” said Adil Color, a writer and editor at Al-Midan newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP). ”If we publish an issue [of the newspaper] that is critical and includes topics the government is uncomfortable with — such as the conflicts in Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan — they punish us by confiscating our next issue.”

Al-Midan’s print run has been confiscated on four different occasions in the last month, most recently on 24 April, but the newspaper remains defiant. For many years it has had to be distributed underground when the SCP was a banned in Sudan. The tabloid’s byline now reads “daily newspaper, but temporarily published on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday”.

the proposed Anti-Terror Law seems designed to legitimize already-existing extra-judicial practices of the Saudi state by cloaking them in the rule of law. With broad support for legal reforms, continued protests and civil disobedience, and public debate growing over the injustices suffered by Saudi prisoners of conscience, the Anti-Terror Law seeks to forestall any movement towards enhanced legal protections.

The strength, as well as the weakness, of the LCP became apparent in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in 2003 and 2004 in Saudi Arabia. Instead of putting the LCP to the test and strengthening it in the process of implementing it, the Saudi government decided to take a different route. The attacks had provided grounds for the regime to shelve the LCP and roll back what had until that point been incremental progress in legal reform.

The draft law does four main things. First, it gives the Ministry of Interior and the Minister himself an unprecedented level of authority and discretion. Second, it defines terrorist crimes over-broadly and vaguely. Third, it lacks the basic measures of due process and fair trial. Finally, and more importantly, it chills and officially bans free expression and the freedom of assembly.

The Ministry of Interior has maintained a great level of authority for a long time. With the lack of any procedural laws and criminal codes, this power has been largely unchecked. The adoption of the LCP was meant to limit its authority and subject it to certain constraints, but it was never implemented. The proposed Anti-Terrorism Law, on the other hand, gives the Interior Minister excessive powers under the cover of law, with no judicial oversight or any form of checks and balances, granting him the power to “take any measure to protect the country from any terrorist danger.” Once the rights guaranteed by this proposed legislation are violated, the person can only appeal to the Interior Minister himself, and not the court, to seek relief.

n addition to terrorist activities, the law encompasses some major forms of freedom of speech. It prohibits any criticism of the government or the country because it might threaten the society’s security, the country’s unity and its general order, or harm its reputation or position.

The proposed law also abrogates the basic principles of due process and fair trial that the Law of Criminal Procedure provides for

Protesting for any reason is prohibited in Saudi Arabia, though there was never a law criminalizing it. The proposed Anti-Terror Law changes that. Article 47 of the proposed anti-terror law makes it illegal to protest for any reason, whether related to a terrorist crime or not. It states “a minimum of 3 years of imprisonment should be imposed on anybody who organizes a protest, participates in organizing it, aids in its preparation, incites or invites others to participate.” Attending a protest is punishable by a minimum of one year of imprisonment, while the punishment increases to seven if the person carries any sign or picture that threatens the stability or unity of the country.

מטופלים טוענים כי ניתנו להם כדורים נגד הומוסקסואליות ולשיפור הזוגיות, שלא לצורך רפואי; המטפלים יקיימו דיון אתי בסוגיה שמסעירה את הקהילה החרדית

אולם אם האידיאל אמור להיות התגברות על היצר, בחירה בטוב על פני הרע, קיום מתוך הכנעה של רצונו ית' וכו', הרי שעל פי המתואר בכתבה האידיאל הזה מת. אין התגברות כי מדכאים באופן כימי את היצר, אין בחירה כי אין אלטרנטיבה מאותה סיבה, ואין הכנעה מרצון אלא מאונס. אין כאן יהודים שומרי מצוות, אלא זומבים הכפויים לעשותן. כאשר אדם לא בוחר, אלא מכבים אצלו את היצר, ברור שהוא לא מקיים מצוות לא-תעשה של שפיכת זרע לבטלה, כפי שברור שאדם מסורס לא מקיים מצווה כזו, וששולחן פורמייקה לא מקיים מצווה כזו. אין כאן אם כן שמירת הלכה, אלא שמירה על החברה, על המסגרת. אין כאן קיום מצוות, אלא קיום אוטומטי של חברה חולה.

The protesters planned to challenge the ban on protesting on Habib Bourguiba Avenue by starting their demonstration on Mohamed V Avenue. Police responded by using tear gas, batons and electric batons to disperse them. Some members of the National Constituent Assembly, journalists, bloggers, lawyers and activists were harshly beaten. Netizens expressed their anger, shock and sense of déja-vu.

Increasingly stricter laws, coupled with the media blackout, nonetheless stand in contrast to small yet consistent protests across the Kingdom. Every week, Saudi men and women gather at the country’s various ministries to make the simplest of demands, including increasing wages, being permanently reinstated in jobs as was promised, getting paid on time, and obtaining long overdue land or cash grants. Despite their regularity, these gatherings—when news of their occurrence actually reaches the media—are repackaged as officials opening their doors to average citizens to solve their problems. At the Ministry of Interior in Riyadh, protests demanding the release of political prisoners—a weekly occurrence only a few years ago—have all but stopped in the last ten months given the heightened attention they have garnered. Until a few weeks ago, when the issue of political prisoners was resurrected again, any mention of prisoner rights was summarily dismissed as a strictly Shi’a demand, which—in the sectarian Saudi media parlance—means it is not really a national issue that merits attention.

Acts of protest have not been limited to the government ministries. Employees from different departments of such larger-than-life companies as Saudi Airlines and the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) have gone on strike for days, at times weeks, due to widespread corruption, deteriorating employment conditions, and on-the-job discriminatory practices. Several times, these employees were able to momentarily shut down one of Riyadh’s busiest intersections on Olaya Street facing the Kingdom Tower, before riot police quickly dispersed them. In early March 2012, following major student protests at Riyadh’s King Saud University, over five thousand women gathered at the King Khalid University in Abha. Contrary to media and official claims, which were overwhelmingly sectarian and dismissive in tone, the female students had been voicing their anger at corrupt administrative measures, discriminatory gender practices, and increasingly restrictive policies. Campus security allowed state police to enter the university in order to put down the protest. As a result, one student was killed, another had a miscarriage, and over forty others were seriously injured. The story was quickly repackaged in the local media as one of female students protesting, of all things, garbage at their university.

Short-term exposure to tear gas can cause pulmonary edema, adult-onset asthma, skin blistering and other serious conditions. Little is known about the long-term effects of the gas, in part because it is so rarely used on a long-term basis.

The minimal research that exists suggests tear gas could indeed be responsible for Zainab's blindness. Health departments in the United States warn that long-term exposure in a confined area - defined as more than one hour - can cause blindness. That's because tear gas can damage the optic nerve, which transmits information from the eye to the brain.

Residents in Bahrain's villages also say the government has started using a new chemical, CR gas, which is significantly more potent than the CS gas typically used against protesters. Physicians for Human Rights documented cases of patients with "atypical symptoms, including non-epileptic seizures and hysteria".

In an escalation of the United Arab Emirates' crackdown on foreign NGOs, the UAE government has detained foreign employees of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and is preventing at least one of them from leaving the country.

The UAE government shut down and revoked the license of the NDI office in Dubai last week, just days before Clinton visited the region and raised the issue in a meeting with Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Ahmed Ismael Abdulsamad was shot in the right thigh before dawn yesterday as he filmed a protest in the Shiite village of Salmabad that plainclothes security forces tried to break up with tear gas and rubber bullets, Al-Wefaq said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. It said one of several “militiamen” accompanying security forces fired live bullets at the protesters from a civilian car, hitting Abdulsamad.

Can we imagine the day the US army shoots and kills a mother, or a son or a boy on the streets of Austin or San Francisco? Don’t imagine a police officer, imagine one of those men we saw on TV, the man in military fatigues, carry out a direct order and command from his superiors to kill a shop owner in Baton Rouge or Philadelphia? Is this conceivable? We can’t really imagine it.

But in our world, in our long forgotten world, it is. Our armies are against us. They’ve turned on us. They’ve shot us, beat us, thrown us in garbage bins, they’ve pummeled us to the ground. They’ve told us with every bullet fired in our direction that we are the State’s worst enemy.

It’s not our occupied land that is the threat to national security. It’s not the Zionist conspiracy. Their reason isn’t Western Capitalism. I am the reason and you are the reason.

We are the reason for army to be.

One leaked paper spelt out clear orders to top officials to give financial and moral support to Assad's supporters in Aleppo, the second major city.

“However security chiefs paint [a] beautiful picture in their reports. They ignore many substantial facts on the ground, simply to boost the president’s morale,” he said.

The emails also appear to show that:

• Assad established a network of trusted aides who reported directly to him through his "private" email account – bypassing both his powerful clan and the country's security apparatus.

• Assad made light of reforms he had promised in an attempt to defuse the crisis, referring to "rubbish laws of parties, elections, media".

• A daughter of the emir of Qatar, Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani, this year advised Asma al-Assad and her husband to leave Syria and suggested that Doha may offer them exile.

• Assad sidestepped extensive US sanctions against him by using a third party with a US address to make purchases of music and apps from Apple's iTunes.

• A Dubai-based company, al-Shahba, with a registered office in London is used as a key conduit for Syrian government business and private purchases by the Syrian first lady.

U.S. officials say they see Iran’s hand in the increasingly brutal crackdown on opposition strongholds in Syria, including evidence of Iranian military and intelligence support for government troops accused of mass executions and other atrocities in the past week.

Three U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports from the region described a spike in Iran­ian-supplied arms and other aid for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad at a time when the regime is mounting an unprecedented offensive to crush resistance in the key city of Homs.

“The aid from Iran is increasing, and is increasingly focused on lethal assistance,” said one of the officials, insisting on anonymity to discuss intelligence reports from the region.

The expanded Iranian role in the conflict has been underscored by reports — supported by U.S. intelligence findings — that an Iranian operative was recently wounded while working with Syrian security forces inside the country.

“They’ve supplied equipment, weapons and technical assistance — even monitoring tools — to help suppress unrest,” the official said. “Iranian security officials also traveled to Damascus to help deliver this assistance.”

A second senior U.S. official said members of Iran’s main intelligence service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, are assisting Syrian counterparts in charge of the crackdown. Last month, the Obama administration imposed sanctions against the intelligence service, citing “financial, material and technological support” for the Syrian crackdown. The Obama administration had previously imposed sanctions against Iran’s elite Quds Force for providing training and equipment to Syrian security units.

Landis, who also runs the influential blog Syria Comment, says he thinks the scale of the document highlights "how overwhelmed the security forces clearly are with this uprising. They're trying to keep track of leadership and who's in the opposition, and it's reaching into the thousands upon thousands." Even for a regime as systematically brutal as Assad's, it's an immense undertaking. "They have to go out and find these people's homes and interrogate their families, and then try to track these people down."

ut it's not just a few people defying the Prince. On February 13, at a funeral for the most recent 'martyr', 21-year-old Zuhair al Said, tens of thousands of people marched through the streets,

chanting "No Sunna, No Shia, but Islamic unity! We're not afraid, down with Nayef! You're the terrorist, you're the criminal, you're the butcher, ya Nayef!"

"We will never rest, country of oppressors! Son of Saud [royal family], hear the voice! We will never give up 'til death!"

Prince Nayef responded with his own threat. On February 20, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said these protests were the 'new terrorism', and were being 'manipulated from abroad' (read: Iran). The Ministry would confront them with 'an iron fist', he said, just like it confronted Al Qaeda.

Toby Jones, an expert on Saudi Arabia at Rutgers University, says this statement is emblematic of Prince Nayef's ruling style, and his worldview. "He is a hardliner: he believes in the use of repression, he is sectarian, he is ideologically anti-Shiite," says Jones. The incumbent, King Abdullah "was practical, and would talk to Shias."

Eighty-seven-year-old King Abdullah is widely admired - even by many dissenters - but he's ailing. It's expected that Prince Nayef will soon inherit his throne. "Nayef is a scary guy, and a move towards crushing communities has to have his fingerprints all over it," says Jones, "because nobody else in the royal family thinks that's a smart move."

The community's unofficial leader, Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar, used his Friday sermon last week to attack the House of Saud, critiquing it for its hypocrisy in criticising Syria for killing its citizens, while condoning the deliberate killing of Qatifi demonstrators.

"For more than 20 years [al-Saffar] has tried to bridge the gap between the Shia community and the government," says Qatifi political commentator Tawfiq Alsaif. "He's met too many officials - including the king - trying to find a solution to the problem of discrimination. But it seems that finally he found himself failing."

"He's the real bellwether," says Jones. "If [al-Saffar] doesn't walk it back in the next week or so, it means that the moderates [in Qatif] are about to disappear."

CAIRO — The Islamist party that leads the new Egyptian Parliament is threatening to review the 1979 peace treaty with Israel if the United States cuts off aid to the country over a crackdown on American-backed nonprofit groups here.

The Obama administration and Congressional leaders have already warned Egypt that the United States might cut off its annual aid to the country, which in the most recent budget came to $1.3 billion in military supplies and about $250 million in other subsidies, including some money directed to the nonprofit groups under investigation. At least two senators have introduced legislation that could curtail the aid, and the Brotherhood released its statements on Thursday as the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the matter.

Troops from the Fourth Armored Division and Republican Guards erected roadblocks in main streets of Barzeh neighborhood, a residential neighborhood north of the city centre, searched houses and made arrests.

He said at least 1,000 soldiers had deployed in the district after sealing off its thoroughfares, along with armored personnel carriers, armored jeeps and pick-up trucks with heavy machineguns mounted on them.

A firefight erupted last week in Qaboun neighborhood, which is adjacent to Barzeh between loyalist forces and Free Syrian Army fighters, indicating the emergence of armed opposition to Assad inside the centre of his rule.

A photographer and two women, one reportedly a French national, were injured by rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at this Friday’s anti-occupation demonstration in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.

Overnight shelling of the town of Anadan, a few km (miles) from Aleppo, killed one man and wounded five others after insurgents and army defectors attacked roadblocks manned by loyalist troops. Rebels in Tel Rifaat, another town to the north, blocked the main highway to Turkey.

"Protests are now regular in Aleppo outside the walls of the old city," a woman teacher who works at a private school said.

"There is no petrol or heating oil and the discontent is spreading. Previously we would hear of scattered protests only in the university and in poor districts but now middle class areas are moving."

Najdat, another activist, said "relative constraint" exercised by Assad's forces since the start of the uprising so as not to enrage Aleppo's inhabitants appears to be fading.

"Previously they would arrest people and let them go after a couple of days. As the demonstrations slowly gathered pace, beatings became more common. Now they are using live ammunition," he said.

Residents in several neighborhoods inside Aleppo reported hearing gunfire. Assad loyalist militiamen, known as 'shabbiha', fired at random overnight in the Hananu neighborhood as the refrain "God is great" echoed from houses in defiance of security forces who deployed in the area after growing pro-democracy demonstrations this week.

A Palestinian atheist who was jailed and beaten last year for expressing anti-Muslim views on Facebook and in blogs says Palestinian security forces are harassing him again, despite government pledges to respect human rights.

The blogger's renewed ordeal is part of a persistent climate of intolerance of dissent in the territories controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, say human rights activists. They say they've seen improvements, including a marked decrease in the mistreatment of detainees, but that Abbas' security forces, who are partially funded by the West, must halt harassment and arbitrary detention.

משטרת אילת ערכה, בשיתוף יחידת השיטור העירוני, מבצע אכיפה במהלכו אותרו שבעה עסקים שנפתחו שלא כחוק כמקומות בילוי עבור מסתננים מאפריקה. זאת בעקבות אירועי אלימות רבים שהתרחשו בעסקים של מסתננים. בעלי העסקים זומנו לשימוע, וקיבלו דו"חות בגין ניהול עסק ללא רישיון.

המשטרה, יחידת השיטור העירוני ואגף רישוי העסקים של עיריה ערכו את המבצע המשולב נגד עסקים שנפתחו בניגוד לחוק על ידי מסתננים. במהלך המבצע הוגשו שבעה דו"חות בגין ניהול עסק ללא רישיון לשבעה מקומות בילוי של מסתננים, ובארבעה מהם הופסקה הפעילות כליל. בעלי העסקים זומנו לשימוע בפני מנהל אגף רישוי עסקים בעיריה טרם ההחלטה על סגירתם.



"במקומות בילוי אלה הוגשו משקאות משכרים ומזון בתנאי תברואה ירודים, ולא היה קיים ברשותם רישיון עסק בתוקף", מסר פקד ליאור בן־סימון, דובר משטרת

מרחב אילת. "מבצע זה נערך בעקבות אירועי אלימות רבים שנבעו מהקמת מקומות בילוי ייחודים אליהם נוהגים להיאסף מדי ערב מסתננים רבים, לשתות לשוכרה ולהתקוטט ביניהם. פעילות זו מסמנת את תחילתו של שיתוף הפעולה בין משטרת מרחב אילת ועיריית אילת כחלק מפרויקט זיהוי ומיפוי מסתננים, שייערך בשנת העבודה 2012 בעיר אילת"

In what was ostensibly an attempt to dissuade attacks against policeman and curb the rising violence in Bahrain, the MOI announced the submitting of a draft law that would penalize attacks on policeman with up to a 15 year prison sentence. Such a law isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though one must also consider how increasingly violent tactics used by many of Bahrain’s youth is largely due to police provacation. Indeed, the BahrainFist operation that began on the 24th January was contextualised as a form of self-defence against continued transgressions by the security apparatus. Although it’s difficult to argue that many of the recent attacks against the security forces weren’t pre-meditated, it’s also fundamental to acknowledge that the lack of meaningful reform coupled with continued police violence is making people increasingly militant. Thus penalising attacks against the security forces after creating conditions that make violence against them somewhat inevitable is ultimately a recipe for continued repression.

Activists said more than 2,000 troops and 50 tanks had been involved in an attack early on Sunday on eastern suburbs of Damascus, barely 5km (three miles) from the city centre.

There were similar reports from the mountain town of Rankous, about 30km (18 miles) to the north. Anti-government groups said it had become a "disaster zone" with columns of smoke rising from homes hit by shellfire.

The assault reportedly started on Saturday in suburbs where rebels from the Free Syrian Army, which is largely made up of army deserters, have taken position - including Kfar Batna, Saqba, Jisreen, and Arbeen.

Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the fighting was "the most intense near the capital since the uprising began".

The most plausible place for such a zone to be established would be in Jisr al-Shughour in Idlib province; the area is known to be strongly pro-opposition, is in close proximity to both the Mediterranean coast and the Turkish border, and has the natural advantage of resting in a valley that stretches southward into Syria and northward in the direction of Turkey, whilst also being surrounded by mountainous terrain to both its east and west. This means that any ground offensive launched by the regime would be limited in its approach, which indeed is why Syrian armed forces were compelled to use airpower to assault the region last June.

However, while the humanitarian merits of a buffer zone are oft repeated, it should be understood that any such effort would first require international forces to launch a preemptive air campaign to neutralize the government’s air defense systems. This would require bombing key military installations in and around Damascus, Aleppo, and Lattakia - all densely populated areas. Indeed, the vast majority of Syrian armed forces assets are located in close proximity to urban settings and whilst many harken back to NATO’s recent air campaign in Libya, which indeed succeeded in allowing Libyan rebels to gain a needed foothold to defeat Ghaddafi, Syria is by no means comparable to Libya.

במהלך המבצע הוגשו שבעה דוחות בגין ניהול עסק ללא רישיון לשבעה מקומות בילוי של מסתננים ובארבעה מהם הופסקה הפעילות במקום. בנוסף, זומנו בעלי העסקים לשימוע בפני מנהל אגף רישוי עסקים בעיריית אילת טרם החלטה על סגירתם ע''י ראש הרשות. לטענת המשטרה, במקומות בילוי אלו הוגשו משקאות משכרים ומזון בתנאי תברואה ירודים ולא קיים ברשותם רישיון עסק בתוקף.

במשטרה אומרים כי מבצע זה נערך בעקבות אירועי אלימות רבים שנבעו מהקמת מקומות בילוי ייחודים אליהם נוהגים להיאסף מידי ערב מסתננים רבים, לשתות לשוכרה ולהתקוטט ביניהם

When they later recalled the siege by Hamas security forces, it was not its ferocity that astonished the residents of Beit Lahiya. It was the target - Shiite Muslims gathered in the building to commemorate the death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson.

Up to 100 policemen and masked men in civilian clothes stormed an apartment building in the Gaza enclave late on Saturday.

Minutes later, they emerged dragging 15 men, whom they then beat with truncheons and denounced as infidels. Neighbourhood residents drawn to the commotion said they were shocked.

"The police showed everyone black Shiite headbands and were yelling to the crowds, 'Look at these kafirs [unbelievers]!'," said Yasser Ziada, 23. "It was like they were putting on a show for us, beating them in front of everyone. No questions - just beatings."

"Because Hamas is straying from this Hizbollah-Syria relationship, that means they are freer to do these kinds of things," said Hani Habib, a political analyst and writer, who lives in Gaza.

That freedom, which has also seen Hamas gravitate towards newly empowered Sunni Islamist groups in the Arab Spring countries of Egypt and Tunisia, opens opportunities for hard-line Hamas members to settle sectarian scores at less cost, Mr Habib said.

Armed Hamas men broke into a gathering of some 30 Shi'ite worshippers in the Gaza Strip last Friday and brutally attacked them, Haaretz has learned.

The assault was part of a broader crackdown on Shi'ite organizations, including charities, that has been sparked in part by Hamas' fear of growing Iranian influence in Gaza.

Hamas militants arrested 14 of the men and beat up the rest. They continued beating the worshippers even after taking some to a hospital and others to a Hamas detention facility.

Gazan sources told Haaretz that Islamic Jihad now contains a group of converts to Shia Islam. The group is led by Iyad al-Hosni, also a convert, who was ousted from Islamic Jihad but recently reinstated, probably under Iranian pressure: Islamic Jihad's leadership visited Iran two months ago, and afterward, al-Hosni was appointed a senior officer in its military wing.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is concerned over the campaign of summons and arrests waged by the Internal Security Service (ISS) in the Gaza Strip, which targeted dozens of members of Fatah Movement who used to be members of former security services. PCHR calls upon the government in the Gaza Strip to stop the summons and the detentions under degrading conditions, and calls for the immediate release of political prisoners to create an appropriate atmosphere for the internal reconciliation.

It is striking that in contrast to the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, these protests did not call for the fall of the regime, but were restricted to demands for social justice, improved living standards, political and constitutional reforms to fight corruption, guaranteed public freedoms and the division of powers. This paper examines the reasons behind the protests and the progress of the movement from February until May 14th when the Omani authorities forcefully dispersed the demonstrators outside the Shura Council.

Today, Mr. Yousef—who is known locally as Alaa—tours the Idlib area with his satellite phone and records the dead on video, uploading his footage and accounts to Skype chat rooms and the Web. He says he has a network of 12 to 15 fellow activists who tell him about events in towns he can't get to.

An investigation into the detention and torture of Syrian civilians, featuring shocking video evidence of men, women and children being subjected to beatings, whippings and more elaborate torture.

But less than seven miles away, Douma is in lockdown. Every Friday – when protests traditionally take place after prayers in the mosques, the suburb is under a military siege.

All around, the walls and shop fronts were covered in a graffiti war; messages for and against the regime scrawled and scrubbed out and rewritten by the respective sides. Residents had flooded the side streets and mud paths that riddle the town. Doors of homes were left ajar, an invitation of shelter to the demonstrators. Locals passed warnings to each other; “there are dogs in that street”, they said, referring to the army.

In an interview, the head of the Damascus battalion of the FSA said he has up to 2,000 men running operations in and around the capital. Meeting him was a tense two-hour operation of visiting false safe houses, connecting with intermediaries, travelling in convoy and then splitting routes.

Operations have also targeted Damascus city centre, with attacks on buildings used by the intelligence services, the commander said. “[Soldiers from] Jobhe intelligence base had arrested 160 people and held them for more than two months. We warned them 24 hours in advance to release the prisoners, but they did not listen. We struck at 2am, with fierce gun battles with the security forces,” the commander said.

But is this the most that the peoples of Turkey, the Middle East and the world could hope for? Why should contemporary Turkey constitute the limit of our political imagination? Why should a state that parades its "development" through drones it purchases from the US, a state that imprisons professors, journalists, translators, lawyers, workers, and students and treats as terrorists the members of a political party representing millions of citizens – why should such a state be one to promote or follow?

Kuwaiti riot police used tear gas and water cannons on Friday to scatter hundreds of stateless protesters demanding citizenship, a move that angered political groups and former MPs.

The police sought to break up a crowd of 400 people gathered after noon prayers in Jahra, 50 kilometers (31 miles) northwest of Kuwait City, raising Kuwaiti flags and banners that read: "We demand Kuwaiti citizenship."

Former Syrian soldiers identified by name 74 commanders and officials responsible for attacks on unarmed protesters, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report names commanders and officials from the Syrian military and intelligence agencies who allegedly ordered, authorized, or condoned widespread killings, torture, and unlawful arrests during the 2011 anti-government protests. Human Rights Watch has urged the Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and impose sanctions against the officials implicated in abuses.

In September, Maj. Michel Dahan, a deputy battalion commander in Givati's Rotem Battalion, testified in the case about the way the soldiers dealt with the weekly protest. "The village's main intersection ... is defined as a closed military area, and the march was not allowed on the [village's] main street," Dahan told the court. "As soon as it arrived we would declare the gathering illegal. When the crowd did not disperse we would use crowd-dispersal means. After that, some of the crowd would leave and some would start throwing rocks at the soldiers. At that stage a kind of game would begin between the people throwing rocks and the soldiers trying to apprehended as many of them as possible before sunset," Dahan said.

I want the regime to fall, Ahmad Abdulrahim says, adding that around thirty percent of Daraa supports Assad. Indeed, another man just passed us and said loudly, “God, Syria, Bashar only.”

Abdulrahim “got a minimum torturing,” but his nephew was killed when he came to Daraa to “open the [military] siege” earlier this year.

“I believe it’s our duty to open the eyes of the world about this regime,” he responds when asked why he was taking a risk in speaking with us as the police watched. “It’s more than evil.”

Eyes brimming with emotion, he switches to Arabic. “This regime is worse than animals, even animals have mercy.”

וזה פשוט מחריד. באמת מחריד. ואני מסתכל סביב, ולא רואה את החברה שלנו נחרדת. לא מכל אלה, ולא משני פצועי הראש באותה הפגנה בנבי סאלח אתמול, ולא משני העצורים בהפגנה השקטה במעסרה, שלא זכו בכלל לדיווח בשום מקום. רואה את הניסוחים הדיפלומטיים של "הפלסטינים טוענים" ואת האמונה העיוורת בעמדת דובר צה"ל. והאי-החרדות הזו מחרידה אותי עוד יותר. ומחריד במיוחד שאחרי כל זה עוד באים הטוקבקיסטים, וכותבים ש"מגיע להם" הכל "ואפילו יותר", או לחלופין שמתארים את ההפגנות העממיות שמתקיימות ברחבי השטחים שבוע אחרי שבוע, למרות כל הדיכוי והפציעות והמעצרים והאימה והמוות, כ"משחק", כ"הצגה", כ"בילוי של אנרכיסטים וערבים משועממים". ומקווה שאיכשהו, בתוך כל זה, שליח האו"ם המיוחד לענייני חופש הביטוי שהיה אתמול בנבי סאלח בזמן שתמימי נורה, רואה ומבין מה קורה פה, ואולי עוד יספק לנו עזרה כלשהי מבחוץ. הוא, או הקונסולים האירופים שיושבים במשפט של באסם תמימי, או הדיפלומטים שמתעדים את הריסות המערות ובארות המים בדרום הר חברון. אבל מתקשה להאמין.

"No one dares ask about them, except in indirect ways," said Dima, a Damascus-based activist who was using an alias for safety reasons. "If anyone asks about his son, he will be questioned, and he can be detained. The only way we are hearing about people who are being detained is when a friend in prison is released."

It was the same three decades ago, she said, when few dared to ask openly about missing loved ones.

"The same crisis [as in the '80s], the same killing, the same mass graves. Nothing has changed," Othman Sahiouni said. "Everyone has an extreme sense of fear; the children, the women, the men."

[pretty shitty report out of homs]
The living stay at home. Everyone sits tight and waits. Many homes in the city are doing without gas, electricity, or hot water; even in the city center, where I stay, there is no hot water to be found. In the morning, people walk around the city center, as if stretching their legs after their hours of being cooped up indoors. But the claustrophobia, the feeling of everyone watching and being watched, is intense. When I venture outside—everyone cautions me against it—I feel like every Syrian is staring at me. There’s shooting, I’m told, in an area just a few hundred yards away from the hotel where I’m staying. Demonstrations still take place in areas of the city, often after a funeral or Friday prayers.

out of Douma

Fear is, in fact, a sentiment voiced often these days by Arab Christians, a sad refrain for an ancient community that was so long a force in politics and culture in the Arab world. These days, a community that still numbers in the millions — with the largest populations in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories — finds itself little more than a spectator to events reshaping a place it once helped create, and sometimes a victim of the violence that those events have unleashed. In all the narratives that the Arab revolts represent — dignity, democracy, rights and social justice — many Christians hew to a far bleaker version of events: that their time may be running out.

“I’m not a fanatic Christian,” a friend told me after the baptism. “I don’t go to church. I respect all religions. But from what I see now, in 30 years, there will be no Christians left here.”

THE debate these days in the Arab world isn’t really about secular versus religious anymore. It is rather a debate within political Islam itself. The Arab world is far more conservative than it was even a generation ago. Those older ideologies seem tired, or horribly disfigured by their blood-soaked realizations in Syria and Iraq. And by virtue of money — and the willingness of regressive states like Saudi Arabia to spend it — secular voices appear peripheral to the more pronounced religious discourses of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, reformist trends within political Islam, the most puritanical currents, known as Salafists, and all the disputes among them.

- From a defector describing an incident in May: “Our commanding officer told us that there were armed conspirators and terrorists attacking civilians and burning Government buildings. We went into Telbisa on that day. We did not see any armed group. The protestors called for freedom. They carried olive branches and marched with their children. We were ordered to either disperse the crowd or eliminate everybody, including children. The orders were to fire in the air and immediately after to shoot at people. No time was allowed between one action and the other. We opened fire; I was there. We used machine guns and other weapons. There were many people on the ground, injured or killed.”

- A number of cases was documented of injured people who were taken to military hospitals, where they were beaten and tortured during interrogation. Torture and killings reportedly took place in the Homs Military Hospital by security forces dressed as doctors and allegedly acting with the complicity of medical personnel.

- Testimonies were received from several men who stated they had been anally raped with batons and that they had witnessed the rape of boys.

Convulsions means a condition where the muscles of the body contracts and relaxes repeatedly. Sometimes they were just shivering. Which is either due to psychological condition or perhaps other metabolic or physiological reasons.

The most life threatening condition from the gas was irritation of the bronchial tree to the extent that it released too much fluids that airway management had to be done with monitoring the oxygen saturation in the blood. On the other end of the spectrum some cases were suffering from panic attacks.

I think there are so many rumours about the types of gas used. We are yet to see a canister written on it anything other than CS gas.

Why are so many cases are presenting with weird symptoms like the convulsions is a mystery. But several people I asked hadn't slept for 2 or more days. Ate very little and has been on the front lines for so long. Incredible amount of stress.

It is unlikely that a nerve agent was used. This would have presented with massive amounts of cases of paralysis and would be a disaster of a very different magnitude. Unfortunately, at least one case was given too much atropine, as an antidote for nerve gas, from one of the pavement field hospitals that it was brought in with atropine poisoning. Doctors are also very stressed and may be rushing to conclusions.

Autopsies conducted on 22 of the bodies of protesters at the Zeinhom morgue in Cairo confirmed that they had been shot with live bullets with three others who died as a result of asphyxiation from teargas, morgue officials told Human Rights Watch.

Doctors in the field hospital set up by protesters in Tahrir Square and hospitals in downtown Cairo reported that they started receiving cases of demonstrators wounded with live ammunition, beginning at 6 p.m. on November 20. One emergency room doctor told Human Rights Watch that Kasr Aini hospital had received six people wounded by live ammunition who subsequently died from their wounds. In three cases, the bullet had entered the top of the person’s head, indicating that it was shot from a height, the doctor said, and three others had been shot in the chest and abdomen. “The six cases arrived at the emergency room, and they were already dying, so we couldn’t do anything for them,” the doctor told Human Rights Watch.

This report documents the violations in Bahrain since February 14th, although crucial to note that due to lack of funding and manpower it was difficult to document all the cases that have occurred. This 87 page report gives background to the situation, then identifies and document all the types of violations that took place, with the aim of putting out recommendations to the Bahraini government, as well as the EU, US, UN OHCHR and the ICC. These recommendations are crucial to start a process of reconciliation and to stop the ongoing violence, including loss of civilian lives, taking place.

The death toll in Syria is breathtaking: Over the past eight months, more Syrians have lost their lives than the number of Palestinians killed over four years of the Second Intifada. The casualty count is now roughly equivalent to the number of U.S. soldiers killed during the entire Iraq war. And the violence shows no sign of letting up. (The civilian death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is measured in the tens and hundreds of thousands, would dwarf all of these figures if included in this chart).

The main reason is that Bashar Al Assad has dedicated a massive amount of his dwindling resources towards keeping the city quiet. The sheer amount of shabee7a and government informants is truly unprecedented. They always seem to be everywhere you go. They are able to stop protests before they start. They are able to have bus-loads of thugs on-scene in a matter of minutes to snuff out any rally. Checkpoints at all entrances of the city have turned Aleppo into a virtual prison. The shabee7a in Aleppo are home-grown, unlike other cities in Syria in which the government buses them in and out when protests erupt, Aleppo Shabee7a are from Aleppo, are well known and number in the tens of thousands.

In the main city-center of Aleppo the ‘fear barrier’ has not been broken as it has in other cities across the country. It took many dead across the country to break each citys respective fear barrier and Aleppo has yet to pay that bloody price. This is (in my opinion) one of the main reasons wide-spread revolt has not broken out across the city. The often-cited media tag line of “Aleppo business elites” not joining the revolution yet is a weak and false assumption. The ‘elite’ of Aleppo are a very small number and do not constitute more than a couple hundred people (including their families). This figure is insignificant compared to the 5million or so inhabitants of Aleppo.

"It is not possible to justify torture in any way, and despite the small number of cases, it is clear there was a systematic policy," Bassiouni said in an interview with Egyptian daily Almasry Alyoum on Monday.

"I investigated and I found 300 cases of torture and I was helped in that by legal experts from Egypt and America."

I have had direct experience and interaction with this “truth commission,” it is another American idea to try and bring Bahrain back from the brink. I do not need a truth commission to tell me what happened to my husband, we have seen this firsthand and we do not need someone from the outside to come tell us what has happened to the Bahraini people. We have experienced it, we have seen it across the country, we do not need verification of that. If anything, the key test of this commission will be to what extent it holds the regime to account, and how can an appointed commission in which people were hand-picked by the king and paid by him, how can the accused party appoint someone that is going to incriminate it? It is illogical and irrational that it would do that. So the expectation is that it will whitewash at least the highest ranks of authority from responsibility for the violations that occurred.

We have hope that there will be justice served. Justice will not just mean saying that this and that happened. It will mean that the people who did this are going to be held to account and punished for what they did. I know these are renowned international law experts, I have spoken to them personally. I have asked Mr. Cherif Bassouni, “Who is responsible for my husband's arrest and torture?” It is not going to be enough to tell me—after we have seen the widespread and numerous accounts of torture, thousands of cases that have happened across the country—that this was the result of individual police officers who acted irresponsibly and unprofessionally in their dealings with protesters. After you hear consistent accounts over and over again, night raids, breaking into houses, terrorizing members of the family, beatings with rubber hoses in the prison cells, across nearly all the police stations in Bahrain, you begin to wonder that this is not a coincidence. This is not a result of one or two police officers. This is widespread systematic torture. Unless this report documents that fact and says that these incidents amount to very grave violations of human rights—that under international law constitute crimes against humanity—there will be much to say about the independence of this commission.

I think I can speak for the majority when I say Bahrainis are very skeptical about the commission’s findings. We are hoping justice will be served, we are hoping the perpetrators at the highest ranks will be at least incriminated and not exonerated. We do not need a political shield for the regime after what was done. Justice here is related to political justice.

“In October alone, over 100 people were arrested in and around Khartoum, the capital. Many of those arrested have stated that they were subjected to torture or other ill treatment in detention,” the human rights group said in a statement released late on Friday.

Among those arrested were members of the opposition group Youth for Change demonstrating peacefully against high food prices, an 85-year-old member of banned opposition party the SPLM-North, and members of legal opposition parties.

After one demonstration against high electricity and water prices, in the town of Masudiya, south of Khartoum, more than 22 people were arrested, including a mentally disabled man who was beaten in custody, and a 13-year-old boy who was subjected to 20 lashes, Amnesty said.

On the unforgettable night of January 28, 2011, a car ran over protesters near the US Embassy in Cairo. Main stream media kept replaying the video of this incident over and over, shocking audiences around the world. In Bahrain though, police cars running over people has become one of the ‘anti-riot techniques' that security forces use against protesters of different ages and in many areas of the small kingdom. As Bahrainis did well documenting many of the atrocities their regime committed against them since they started protesting last February, here are some of the videos available on YouTube that show how police cars run over protesters in Bahrain.

The Italian company had come under pressure in recent days, with non-profit groups such as Human Rights Watch calling for the project to be shut down. Protesters from Italy’s Pirate Party and the National Coalition to Support the Syrian Revolution rallied yesterday outside Area’s headquarters next to Milan’s Malpensa Airport, demanding the company pull the plug.

All work on the system had already been suspended for more than two months, Formenti said. He declined to explain why, saying technical problems “could be one of the reasons.”

The person familiar with the project said it had suffered technical setbacks.

His father, a poor boy who proved he was more, would have known better. Sheltered by a royal court, Bashar seemed oblivious to a drought-stricken countryside seething under the sway of utterly unaccountable security forces. He overlooked crimes that his family and the state had committed. He had forgotten that in the calculus of the imperium his father created, the instrument through which Bashar really exercised power, fear made more sense than adulation, whatever his modernizing pretensions. Even today, eight months after an uprising and a ferocious crackdown that, by the United Nations’ count, has killed more than 3,000 people and, by the Arab League’s estimate, put more than 70,000 in jail, people who have seen Bashar contend that he still doesn’t recognize the severity of the challenge. This summer, Turkish officials actually offered him their own intelligence to persuade him that the information coming from his people was bad, incomplete and misleading. They were telling him what he wanted to hear. But since then, the old truths have returned, and his regime has fallen back on the premise of his father’s rule. It has sought to restore the wall of dread between ruler and ruled.

“What support today it enjoys is almost entirely of a negative sort,” the International Crisis Group wrote this month. “Fear of sectarian retribution, Islamism, foreign interference, social upheaval or, more simply, anxiety about the unknown.”

Hundreds of protesters were prevented from returning to a symbolic square in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, on Friday, following the funeral of a man the main opposition party said was beaten to death by security forces this week.

On the day Syria accepted an Arab League initiative to halt months of violence, free prisoners and open dialogue with the opposition, at least 24 more people were killed by security forces – including 11 in one incident. Here, Syrian activists give personal accounts of how government forces have attempted to quash the Arab Spring uprising using violent tactics - including torture, detention and beatings

Judging from the US’ mild statement after the massacre, I believe SCAF’s message was delivered. And it was not just delivered to the international community, but also to the general public as well. Fear and insecurity dominates the country today, and very few would like to collide with the military junta whom they consider to be the last remaining pillar holding the country together.

This takes us to what I believe will happen to activists in Egypt. After ensuring that there won’t be much of a powerful objection from the inside front nor the international community, I believe SCAF will crackdown on activists and media unprecedentedly.

In practice, this integration of security and political solutions is evident in the broad strokes of what the regime has referred to as reforms, which it regards as the core of the political solution, one focused primarily on changing electoral, political party, and media laws. A close reading of these laws reveals that each of them contains a central article that reduces all the other provisions to mere window-dressing in order to project an acceptable image of a regime embarking on reform. Syrian media law grants the Council of Ministers, which is dominated by the Ba’ath Party, the right to award licenses to newspapers, while the political parties’ law grants a committee headed by the Ba’athist Interior Minister the right to license each political party. Whereas Syrian electoral law stipulates that fifty percent of the Legislative Council’s members must be workers and farmers from the General Federation of Trade Unions and Farmers’ Union, both of which are under the complete control of the Ba’ath Party. Hence, the regime is seeking to reform its image but not to bring its monopoly of power to an end or to reform itself.

As mentioned above, shabiha forces were initially confined to the city of Latakia, but the regime soon found them to be a complementary weapon in executing its security option. It let them loose in Latakia, and then in Banias and the 86th precinct of Damascus (where a large majority of people from the coast live). Less than two months after the start of the uprising, the shabiha groups had grown and transformed themselves into mercenary gangs in all senses of the word. Men who serve in these gangs are paid a daily wage, either through the governmental institutions and departments to which their members belong or security forces. These gangs have been assigned specific missions, in addition to assisting in repressing demonstrators. They sweep the streets to create a general sense of panic, and to inflame sectarian fears, particularly among the Christians and Alawis.

But during a rare, authorized visit to Syria by a Western journalist, conducted under close government supervision, it became clear that not only do Assad and his allies appear to be in no imminent danger of falling but that they also feel no pressure to offer concessions to those who have been taking to the streets for months to call for radical change.

Rather, the government is touting a package of limited changes that would leave the existing power of the state intact while focusing on crushing the remainder of the protest movement by force. That “security first” approach has failed to prevent demonstrations from erupting repeatedly in many parts of the country, but it does appear to have diminished their size and scope.

The Syrian opposition named that day "Friday of patience and persistence". In the Omar Mosque of Homs, Sheikh Mahmud al Dalati told his followers that victory would surely be coming. He praised the people's unity. He said he never imagined that he would see people from Ghota, Inshaat or Hamra, wealthy areas, crying and carrying on their shoulders the body of a man from Khaldiyeh, a poor area. People had also become more religious, he said, reading the Quran for the first time, or reading it several times when they had never read it before. A demonstration followed as usual. "Israel, Assad is with you to death!" people shouted, mocking their president.

In addition, authorities have also threatened prosecution for Twitter and Facebook posts calling for protests and other anti-government activities (including, presumably, electoral boycott), and have banned photography or video-taking "in the vicinity" of polling stations, presumably to mask dismal voter turnout.

Really, then, with the indiscriminate use of force against protesters; witch-hunts on Bahrain TV and pro-government social media; and threats of punishment for online activity and electoral boycott; all that is left to recreate the atmosphere of February, March, and April is an op-ed from Yusif Al Bin Khalil claiming that the United Sates and its Iranian ally is trying to overthrow the Bahraini regime.

On September 25 this year, Moroccan settlers and security forces again attacked peacefully protesting Saharawis, this time in Dakhla in occupied Western Sahara. Many were injured in these attacks, including women and children, and 28-year-old Saharwi activist Maichan Mohamed Lamin Lehbib was assassinated by Moroccan forces, according to the Saharawi liberation movement, Polisario. And last Monday, October 10, Moroccan forces brutally attacked peaceful protesters in El Aaiun in the occupied territories. According to the Polisario, approximately 30 Saharawis were injured and many others arrested.

the overwhelming thrust of eyewitness accounts, from both Muslims and Christians, is that the army initiated the violence, first throwing stones, then wielding batons, then firing live ammunition, before taking the grim final step of grinding protesters into the pavement. Certainly, several protesters threw stones as well, but eyewitnesses are adamant that they did so in response to the bullets being shot at them.

The pope pointed out that forensic reports indicate that two thirds of the dead were killed by live ammunition, with the remaining third crushed to death.

What is most disconcerting is that the deadliest clashes since the downfall of Mubarak have not been a wakeup call for the country as a whole. By and large, Egyptian public opinion is sympathetic (if quietly) to the army’s version of events and susceptible to believing that the army may have been, in some sense, the victim.

October 9 is not, in fact, the first date on which the army has discharged live ammunition at peaceful Coptic demonstrators. In March 2011, soldiers fired upon the garbage collectors of Muqattam, who were protesting the burning of another church in Sol, and other soldiers shot at monks at a monastery in February. The armed forces and transitional government have responded to Islamist attacks on churches and Christian-owned property with a collective shrug, either ignoring the incidents entirely or compounding the injustice by sponsoring “reconciliation committees” administered by salafi leaders whose discourse on non-Muslims in mosques has been deeply disquieting.

The authorities have worked diligently to put the argument in public space that the street protest movement was violent, sought to replace the monarchy with an Iran-allied republic and did not represent the majority of Bahrainis. To do this, a number of measures have been taken such as hiring PR companies, promoting a Sunni-led political party to occupy a nationalist middle ground, and creating a chattering army of Bahrainis and foreigners primed with talking points to influence traditional and online media, often with fake or hidden identities.

Pro-democracy protests which swept the Arab world earlier in the year have erupted in eastern Saudi Arabia over the past three days, with police opening fire with live rounds and many people injured, opposition activists say.

Saudi Arabia last night confirmed there had been fighting in the region and that 11 security personnel and three civilians had been injured in al-Qatif, a large Shia city on the coast of Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province. The opposition say that 24 men and three women were wounded on Monday night and taken to al-Qatif hospital.

Most dangerous, though, is the exacerbation of sectarian hatred in a country that has never really reconciled the narratives of the Khalifa family’s long-ago conquest. No one claims that Sunnis and Shiites ever lived in harmony here. But the country stands as a singular example of the way venerable distinctions of ethnicity, sect and history can be manipulated in the Arab world, often cynically, in the pursuit of power.

All the while the prospects for any meaningful process of reflection -- or even reconciliation -- dim with each new incident. Moreover, political power at the heart of the regime appears to be coalescing around a group of hard-liners associated with the Prime Minister. These include the Interior Minister (Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah) and the influential Bin Ahmed brothers Khalid (Minister of the Royal Court) and Khalifa (head of the Bahrain Defense Force, itself much strengthened following an emergency recruiting drive in Pakistan). The sidelining of reformers around the King and his son, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad, quickened in late-August as the Prime Minister announced an anti-corruption drive and called for a strategy to increase foreign business investment in Bahrain. Both issues encroach directly onto the Economic Development Board, chaired by the Crown Prince, which since 2006 had led the way in attracting foreign direct investment and rooting out corruption.