Despite allegations of torture, life sentences handed out to civilians tried over clashes at a Sahrawi protest camp in 2010.

Authorities in Yemen “played deaf” to last-ditch calls to save a prisoner who was executed on Wednesday, Amnesty International has said.

Two years since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, frustrations in Egypt are growing at the slow pace of reform and ongoing abuses committed by police and other security forces.

Letting perpetrators in Egypt get away with sexual harassment and assault has fuelled violent attacks against women in the vicinity of Tahrir Square.

The killing today of Tunisian opposition politician Chokri Belaid, outside his home must prompt a thorough, independent and impartial investigation by the Tunisian authorities.

Despair and hopelessness pervade in a Yemeni prison where scores of children are on hunger strike to protest at their conditions and about a fellow inmate's recent death sentence.

Iran must release all journalists being held solely for carrying out their legitimate work, Amnesty International urged after more than a dozen reporters were arrested amid newspaper raids.

Egypt must ensure the deaths of hundreds of protesters since early 2011 are independently and effectively investigated if it wants to move beyond the abuses that defined the Mubarak era.

Oussama Bouajila and Chahine Berrich from an anti-poverty street art group were charged after they were caught writing slogans in support of the poor.