MER Article Send My Regards to Your Mother I. I sometimes refer to my college years in Saudi Arabia as “doing time.” But early in those years I did some time that almost did me in—and my mother, too. I had spent high school in Bahrain as a boarder. My father pressured me to attend university near our house in Dhahran, where he worked as a Zein El-Amine • 25 min read
MER Article The Moroccan Prison in Literature and Architecture In seventeenth-century Morocco, the scholar Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan Ibn Mas‘ud al-Yusi admonished the reigning Sultan Mawlay Isma‘il in writing. His much quoted letter, the “short epistle” or al-risala al-sughra, instructed the ruler to avoid injustice and oppression. Mawlay Isma‘il was second in line as Susan Slyomovics • 14 min read
MER Article Resistance Museum in Abu Dis In the shadow of the Israeli separation wall, and on the bucolic campus of al-Quds University in Abu Dis, a suburb of East Jerusalem, sits a museum dedicated to Palestinian prisoners of Israel. The Abu Jihad Museum for the Prisoners’ Movement is named after the Palestinian political prisoner and mar Alex Lubin • 3 min read
MER Article Writing Palestinian Politics in Israel's Prisons Before Oslo Since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, around three quarters of a million Palestinians have been arrested, sometimes for actions taken against Israeli soldiers or civilians, but at other times for association with others or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the early Rebecca Granato • 9 min read
MER Article "A Beast That Took a Break and Came Back" Aida Seif al-Dawla is a psychiatrist whose fight for citizens’ rights and dignity in Egypt has taken many forms since her days as a student activist in the 1970s. In 1993, she founded the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, of which she remains executive director Lina Attalah • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2015) No publication based in Washington should write about prisons without first noting that America leads the world in incarceration. Amanda Ufheil-Somers, Chris Toensing • 9 min read
Current Analysis Matariyya, Egypt's New Theater of Dissent On June 6, two police officers will stand trial for torturing Karim Hamdi, a 27 year-old lawyer, to death on a cold February evening inside the Matariyya police station in eastern metropolitan Cairo. The identities of the officers are protected by a gag order, but the widely publicized images of the Amira Howeidy • 16 min read
Current Analysis Three Updates on Palestinian Political Prisoners Update 1 on prisoners and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the halls of the State Department: Last week, the United States considered releasing Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of espionage on behalf of Israel, in exchange for Israel doing, as political analyst Yousef Munayyer put it, “ Amahl Bishara • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editors (March/April 1984) The war between Iran and Iraq has entered its most gruesome phase. Iran has stepped up its “human wave” attacks, sending tens of thousands of new recruits, including many young boys, to face entrenched Iraqi gun positions or to serve as human mine detonators. Tehran, with some evidence, accuses the The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article The Prisoners of Israel The Israeli Defense Forces have taken some 9,000 to 10,000 Palestinians and Lebanese prisoner in south Lebanon. Because the Israelis have not released lists of names or figures, the exact number of prisoners currently held cannot be determined. The IDF itself has released its estimate of 7,000 to 9, Judith Tucker • 8 min read
