Category Archives: Middle East

11May/08

A Dissident in Paris

Middle East, Syria, , ,

Jan. 17, 2004

By NIR BOMS & ERICK STAKELBECK

Nizar Nayouf has not only seen hell, he has even lived to tell about it. Barely.

Just 41 years old, Nayouf suffers from permanent spinal injuries, a failing left kidney, a bleeding gastric ulcer, and deteriorating eyesight. He also has paralysis in his lower extremities and unsightly disfigurements caused by cigarette burns that were anything but accidental.

The source of Nayouf’s ailments, and the scene of his own personal hell, was Syria’s Palestine Prison, which is run by the Syrian Intelligence Service or “Mukhabarat,” famous for its unrelenting cruelty.

His crime? Founding a human rights organization and speaking out against a Ba’athist regime that has held Syria in a totalitarian grip for four decades.

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08May/08

The French Connection…to Syria

Middle East, Syria, ,

By Nir Boms
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 5, 2004

In 1978, as protests against Shah Phalavi swept across Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was living in a cozy house in the Parisian suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau, engineering an Islamic revolution that would soon shake the world. Under the watchful eye of the French government, Khomeini met regularly with journalists and actively campaigned for the Shah’s overthrow. In fact, when Pahlavi finally fled Iran in 1979, Khomeini was provided with a chartered Air France flight to Tehran, where he presided over one of the world’s most repressive regimes until his death in 1989. France’s generous hospitality toward Khomeini is interesting to note in light of the plight of Nizar Nayouf, a dissident Syrian journalist and human rights activist currently living, like Khomeini once did, as a political refugee in the suburbs of Paris.

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08May/08

Promoting Human Rights

Middle East, Saudi Arabia, ,

Article published Mar 7, 2008

By Nir Boms

An important, yet underreported, summit took place recently in Riyadh. Turki K. Al Sudairy, a Saudi minister and president of the Saudi Supreme Human Rights Commission and Pakistan’s federal minister for human rights, Ansar Burney, conducted a series of high level meetings to discuss human rights in their respective countries.

According to a Pakistani News agency, the ministers, who also represent two member-states in the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, discussed human trafficking, slavery, women’s issues and other human rights topics at length.. After a series of meetings, pleasantries, and several fancy dinners, they even agreed to work together to improve a few human rights issues in the region. Continue reading →

08May/08

Saudi Arabia: An “Ally” We Could Do Without

Middle East, Saudi Arabia, ,

By Nir Boms
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 10, 2004

“Fighting the occupiers is a duty for all those who are able,” reads an open letter to the Iraqi people currently posted on the Internet. Issued by more than two dozen Saudi scholars and preachers on November 6, the letter calls on Iraqis to fight coalition forces in their midst.

The Saudi group has also issued a fatwa, or religious edict, forbidding Muslims to assist or support any military operation by an occupying force. Continue reading →