User:Timdwilliamson/SamarBadawiArrest

January 2016 arrest
In a press release on January 12, 2016, Amnesty International announced that Samar Badawi had been arrested and, along with her two-year-old daughter Joud, had been taken to a police station in Jeddah where she was interrogated. Four hours later, Badawi was transferred to Dhaban central prison, the same prison where her brother, Saudi dissident Raif Badawi is held. Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program called Badawi's arrest, "...yet another alarming setback human rights in Saudi Arabia [demonstrating] the extreme lengths to which the authorities are prepared to go in their relentless campaign to harass and intimidate human rights defenders into silent submission." Ensaf Haidar, wife of Samar's brother and President of the Raif Badawi Foundation, confirmed reports of Samar Badawi's arrest via Twitter. Center for Inquiry, an American nonprofit educational organization, called for her immediate release, and asked the US State Department to "bring to bear what diplomatic power they have to press Saudi Arabia to release Samar." A spokesperson for the Saudi Interior Ministry, Maj. Gen. Mansour Turki, denied claims that Badawi had been arrested.