Update: Ismaeel Al-Meqbali has been released on 03 September 2015.

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) has received further reports that the Omani Internal Security Service (ISS) has been ordered by top officials to systematically target human rights defenders and Internet activists in the country. Its goal appears to be to dismantle the human rights movement in Oman.

On 23 August 2015, the ISS summoned human rights defender Ismaeel Al-Meqbali to appear before the Special Division of the Omani Police General Command in the capital, Muscat. At the time of the summons, he was spending his holiday with his family in the United Arab Emirates. He responded to the summons on 29 August and has been reported missing since then. The latest reports confirm that he is detained incommunicado at the Special Division in the Al-Qurum area of Muscat. The Special Division represents the executive body of the Omani ISS.

Al-Meqbali is a blogger and was very active in the Sohar protests in 2011 and as such was arrested for days before being released. He continues to support detainees through his social media accounts and to criticize the general situation in Oman. In 2012, he was sentenced to one and a half years, charged with “Insulting the Sultan” and only freed by the Sultan Qaboos during an amnesty. 

On 23 August 2015, human rights defender Helal Al-Alawi was arrested and only released on 31 August 2015. Helal was detained incommunicado also at the Special Division in Muscat. He was also arrested in 2011 in relation to Sohar protests and sentenced to five years in prison charged with allegedly “forcing the civil servants out of their offices.” He was released after two and a half years through an amnesty from Sultan Qaboos. He is a popular human rights figure who, while in detention, started many hunger strikes and sewed his mouth shut many times with a needle and thread.

Al-Alawi is a blogger who has continued in recent years his online activities in defence of detained human rights defenders and prisoners of conscious.

For more information about recent human rights violations committed by the Omani ISS, see the following link: https://www.gc4hr.org/news/index/country/6

Once again the GCHR expresses serious concern about the targeting of human rights defenders and bloggers in Oman and calls on the international community including the United Nations system and governments that have influence to put pressure on the Omani government to release all the detained human rights defenders and prisoner of conscience immediately and without any conditions.

The GCHR also urges the authorities in Oman to guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders in Oman are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions including judicial harassment.