{"id":18570,"date":"2013-10-08T15:41:53","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T21:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=18570"},"modified":"2013-10-08T15:41:53","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T21:41:53","slug":"saudi-activist-waleed-abu-al-khair-held-after-hosting-forums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=18570","title":{"rendered":"Saudi activist Waleed Abu al-Khair, held after hosting forums"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Saudi activist Waleed Abu al-Khair, held after hosting forums<\/strong><br \/>\nThe Associated Press &#8211; 7 October, 2013 &#8211; Las Vegas Sun<\/p>\n<p>A rights group says a prominent Saudi Arabian activist has been detained after leading meetings to discuss political affairs and other issues in the kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>It was unclear whether Waleed Abu al-Khair will face new charges or was placed in detention related to his ongoing trial on charges that include opposing Saudi Arabia&#8217;s monarchy and ruling institutions.<\/p>\n<p>The London-based Institute for Human Rights in Saudi Arabia says al-Khair was taken into custody Wednesday in Jiddah, where he was holding discussion forums on Saudi affairs. Al-Khair is a lawyer and founder of a human rights group.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi authorities had no immediate comment.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab allies have expanded crackdowns on activists and perceived political dissent since the beginning of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegassun.com\/news\/2013\/oct\/07\/ml-saudi-activist\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8230;source<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D18570&amp;text=Saudi+activist+Waleed+Abu+al-Khair%2C+held+after+hosting+forums&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saudi activist Waleed Abu al-Khair, held after hosting forums The Associated Press &#8211; 7 October, 2013 &#8211; Las Vegas Sun A rights group says a prominent Saudi Arabian activist has been detained after leading meetings to discuss political affairs and other issues in the kingdom. It was unclear whether Waleed Abu al-Khair will face new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=18570#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18571,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18570\/revisions\/18571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}