A human rights activist for Frontline Defenders on Aug. 9 reported that the lawyer representing a Bahraini blogger held by authorities has been detained himself days after alleging his client had been tortured while in police custody. Abdul Aziz Moussa is representing Mohamed Hassan, who acted as a media contact point for various foreign news stories, which included coverage of anti-government protests and police crackdowns in Bahrain. Hassan was taken from his home in July by men associated with the Ministry of Interior and detained incommunicado at the Criminal Investigation Department. Moussa was detained on August 8 after he reported on Twitter the visible signs of torture he had seen on his client Hassan. Front Line Defenders considers that the arrest and detention of Hassan and Moussa to be directly related to their activities in defense of human rights.

More than 40,000 marched yon Tunisia's National Constituent Assembly Aug. 6 to demand the resignation of the government, with progress towards a new constitution stalled. The elected body has suspended its work until the Islamist-led administration and secular opposition open negotiations over the stalemate sparked by last month's slaying of leading left-opposition figure Mohamed Brahmi. (BBC News, Aug. 6; AFP, Aug. 7) Responding to an obvious question from Al Jazeera, Walid Bennani, vice president of the ruling Ennahda party, said: "There's no coup d'etat in Tunisia. There’s an opposition party that wants to dissolve the government. The opposition...wants to repeat the Egyptian scenario. That can't happen." (Al Jazeera, Aug. 8)

An appeals court in Kuwait on July 22 overturned the criminal convictions of three former members of parliament for criticizing the Emir, the nation's leader. The Kuwait Society for Human Rights helped break the story internationally via Twitter, when its director posted a short statement regarding the acquittal. The three men were convicted in February of insulting Emir Shaikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah at a protest in October. As members of parliament, they initially spoke out against new election laws and several other issues dealing with flawed civil procedure. The same flaws they addressed later led to the dissolution of the parliament. The Kuwait government has not yet indicated if it will choose to appeal this decision to the supreme court.

Egyptian blogger Ahmed Douma, who had been sentenced to six months in prison for insulting ousted president Mohammed Morsi, was released on July 6, according to state news agency MENA. The prosecution requested Douma's release in June, dropping the charges against him. Despite the release order, Douma remained in custody for another trial on a separate charge. Douma was charged along with 11 others with inciting violence during protests in March in which at least 160 people were injured. The Cairo Criminal Court acquitted all 12 defendants because the evidence against them was deemed void.

Courts in China's far western Xinjiang province on June 20 sentenced 11 ethnic Uighurs to up to six years in prison for promoting extremism. Eight of those convicted came from the old Silk Road city of Kashgar, the Justice Ministry's official newspaper Legal Daily. Although the report did not mention ethnicity, all had Uighur names. In one case, the suspect visited "illegal" websites to download material that "whipped up religious fervor," "preached 'holy war'" and "whipped up ethnic enmity." Another eight received terms of up to 13 years for such crimes as "organizing a terrorist organization."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in conjunction with the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) filed suit (PDF) June 11 against the National Security Agency (NSA) challenging its recently revealed phone data collection. As a Verizon business network services customer, the ACLU argues that the program violates the rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy as protected by the First and Fourth Amendments. The complaint also charges that the program oversteps Congress' authority as outlined in the Patriot Ac. On June 10, the ACLU DC affiliate and Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, filed a motion (PDF) with the secret surveillance court that issued the order allowing the data collection. They requested that the court provide a statutory basis of its recent controversial decisions to permit collection of civilians' personal data from private communication companies.

This is pretty funny. The Wall Street Journal informs us that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been a big hit among freedom-hungry Chinese cyber-cognoscenti. "This is the definition of heroism," wrote one particularly enthusiastic micro-blogger (presumably on Sina Weibo). "Doing this proves he genuinely cares about this country and about his country's citizens. All countries need someone like him!" This is a brilliantly acceptable guise for dissent within China: it places Beijing in the uncomfortable position of either having to tolerate the dissent or implicitly diss a dissident from the rival superpower! We were a little skeptical when Snowden took refuge in Hong Kong, recalling Julian Assange's coziness with authoritarian regimes even as he is glorified as an avatar of freedom. But Beijing will probably see Snowden as too hot a potato, for obvious reasons. "He must be protected," one sharp wit wrote on Sina Weibo. "This is one of the few opportunities the Communist Party has to contribute to world good." (See report at Quartz)

A criminal court in Kuwait on June 10 sentenced a woman to 11 years in prison for remarks she made on Twitter. Huda al-Ajmi was found guilty of three violations, including insulting the nation's ruler, Emir Shaikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, calling to overthrow the government and misusing her mobile phone. The 11-year prison term is the harshest sentence yet given to an online activist in Kuwait and will become final if it is not overturned when contested in the court of appeals and cassation court. Huda al-Ajmi, who denies the charges, is not a well-known activist and is not known to have participated in opposition protests.