RIYADH: Saudi authorities have freed all but two of a group of women arrested early this month while staging a sit-in to demand the release of Islamist prisoners in the city of Buraida, police said yesterday.
“All women arrested have been freed, with the exception of two of them who refused to leave even after all procedures for their release were completed,” a police spokesman in the northern Qassim province said in a statement carried by the SPA news agency.
“Contacts are ongoing with their families to convince them to implement the judicial order,” said the spokesman. SPA had previously reported that Saudi police arrested 176 people on March 1 for holding a protest.
Authorities have accused the protesters of acting on behalf of “deviant groups” — a term they usually use to refer to the Al Qaeda jihadist network.
During a Thursday tour of Buraida, Qassim’s main city, interior ministry spokesman Mansur Al Turki said that all prisoners had been released “with the exception of 19 women, 55 Saudis, and an Egyptian who had impersonated a Saudi.”
Small groups of women have gathered almost daily in Buraida, north of Riyadh, to demand the release of imprisoned Islamist relatives, and dozens of protesters held a rare sit-in outside the Buraida prison in September.
Court hears Islamists accused of plot in UAE
ABU DHABI: The Federal Supreme Court of Abu Dhabi yesterday heard the lawyers of 94 Islamists accused of plotting to seize power in the United Arab Emirates before scheduling the next sessions to March 18 and 19.
Eighty-five Islamists including 12 women appeared in court, for the second hearing in the largest trial in the history of the UAE, state news agency Wam reported quoting the justice ministry.
It said the session was held in the absence of international media and human rights groups, adding that 21 local journalists and six representatives of pro-government NGOs were present in court.AFP
