Living Archive
Defenders.
An open record of human rights defenders across the Middle East and North Africa. Every entry is a case file — dated, sourced, and kept current.
173
Records on
the open archive
87
Currently held
detained · sentenced · on trial
57
In exile or under
transnational repression
11
In memoriam
killed for their work
The Record
Filtered cases
Abdelwahab Ahmed Mohamed Hashem “Bob”
Abdelwahab Ahmed Mohamed Hashem—known to friends and colleagues as Bob—leads the Workers' Coordination Committee in North Kordofan, advocating for public employees amid…
Abdul Majid Sabra
Abdul Majid Sabra is a lawyer who has defended journalists, political activists, and others detained for exercising fundamental rights in Yemen. He…
Hunger strikeMontaser Abdullah
Montaser Abdullah is a Sudanese lawyer who represented survivors of gender-based violence and defended members of the Tagadom political coalition. He was…
Abdulrahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi
A dual Egyptian-Turkish poet arrested at the Lebanon-Syria border, forcibly extradited to the UAE, and held incommunicado since January 2025 after publishing…
Ahmed Al-Tohamy
Ahmed Al-Tohamy is a political science scholar whose research has been recognized internationally. He was arrested from his home in Cairo in…
Ahmed Amasha
Ahmed Amasha is a veterinarian, trade unionist, and co-founder of the League for Families of the Disappeared. He has been arrested twice,…
Ahmed Jaafar
Ahmed Jaafar is a Bahraini labour activist serving life imprisonment after Serbia forcibly extradited him in January 2022 despite a binding European…
Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali
Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali was extradited from Serbia to Bahrain in 2021 despite a binding European Court order. Convicted in absentia after…
Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja
Co-founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, sentenced to life in prison after the 2011 uprising. Tortured, sexually assaulted, and held…
Hunger strikeAli Mammeri
Ali Mammeri is a public sector employee and trade union president who founded the Independent National Union of Employees in the Culture…
Aya Kamal El-Din Hussein
Aya Kamal El-Din Hussein is a political activist and fashion designer first arrested at seventeen. She has been held in pre-trial detention…
Hassan Mushaima
Hassan Mushaima is a leading Bahraini opposition figure sentenced to life in prison after the 2011 mass protests. Now held in prolonged…
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