The security forces arrested Ziab El-Amri, a blogger and activist, on 20 May 2013 after the Omani special task force unit besieged his house located in Senaw in the Modabi province north of Oman.
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) denounces the Omani security services’ continuous targeting and arrest of activists on social networks websites without charges or judicial orders.
The security forces arrested Ziab El-Amri, a blogger and activist, on 20 May 2013 after the Omani special task force unit besieged his house located in Senaw in the Modabi province north of Oman. The officers forcefully arrested him after beating his brother without legal orders to arrest or invade the house. He was then taken to unknown place.
El-Amri, who suffers from heart complications and blood pressure problems, received a phone call recently from an entity mentioning that it happens to be the police forces’ high command unit. He was asked to go to the Omani intelligence department. However, El-Amri refused and asked that an official summons be sent to him. He was threatened with arbitrary detention and eventually arrested for not complying with the request.
The summons came a few days after El-Amri published information on Facebook related to a chicken farm in the province of El-Medabi saying that it was owned by one of the relatives of the Royal Office Minister Sultan El-No’mani. The district had been recently witnessing protests from residents who were opposed to the establishing of a chicken farm in the area.
“The arrest of the blogger in an arbitrary way and without legal grounds is considered punishment for his support and his solidarity with the detainees of the two ‘insulting the Sultan’ cases as well as for publishing news about the chicken far,” said ANHRI, “and a continuation of arrest campaign waged by the security services against activists and bloggers in Oman.”
ANHRI holds the Omani authorities criminally responsible for putting the blogger’s life at risk.
The organization demands that he is immediately released, that his safety is ensured and that he is not prosecuted.