outlets from employing journalists deemed to have “insulted” Bahrain or other Gulf states. In Iran, the authorities prosecuted and imprisoned scores of peaceful critics on vague and spurious national security charges. Those targeted included human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, trade unionists, filmmakers, musicians, women’s rights activists, ethnic and religious minority rights activists, and anti-death penalty campaigners. In Kuwait, a new cybercrime law penalized peaceful online criticism of the government and judiciary with up to 10 years’ imprisonment and another law barred anyone convicted of insulting the Emir, God or the prophets from standing as a parliamentary candidate. Government critics and journalists were also imprisoned in Oman, where the authorities closed down a newspaper that had published reports alleging official corruption, and in Saudi Arabia, where the courts handed down lengthy prison sentences on overly broad charges such as “breaking allegiance to the ruler”. In Jordan, a gunman killed a journalist whom the authorities had accused of posting a cartoon they deemed “offensive” to Islam; the gunman was later charged with murder. The right to freedom of association was widely curtailed in the region. States including Iran, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia did not permit independent political parties. Human rights groups, including those campaigning for women’s rights, were targeted by the authorities in a number of countries. In Egypt, the authorities ordered the closure of a centre renowned for its treatment of survivors of torture and victims of political violence, froze the assets of other human rights groups, and published new draft legislation that threatened to make it impossible for independent NGOs to continue to operate. In Algeria, the government sought to undermine local human rights groups, including Amnesty International Algeria, by continuing to block their legal registration. The Moroccan authorities similarly continued to block the legal registration of several human rights groups. In Bahrain, the authorities suspended the main opposition Amnesty International Report 2016/17 association in June, having imprisoned its leader in 2014, seized its assets, and in July obtained a court order for its dissolution. In Iran, the Association of Iranian Journalists appealed unsuccessfully to the President to honour his 2013 election pledge to lift its suspension, and the authorities refused to renew the licence of the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association, instead imprisoning some of its members on account of their alleged “membership of an illegal group”. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards also harassed women’s human rights defenders. In Algeria the authorities maintained their 15-year ban on all demonstrations in the capital, Algiers, forcibly dispersed other protests, and imprisoned peaceful protesters. In Bahrain, the government continued to ban all demonstrations in the capital, Manama, and the security forces used excessive force to disperse protests in predominantly Shi’a villages. Armed groups also restricted freedoms of expression and association in areas they controlled, including in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. In Iraq, self-declared IS “courts” ordered stoning for “adultery” and floggings and other corporal punishments against inhabitants for smoking, failing to adhere to the IS-imposed dress code, or other IS rules. In Libya, armed groups harassed, abducted, tortured and killed human rights defenders and journalists. JUSTICE SYSTEM Security forces throughout the region arbitrarily arrested and detained actual and suspected government critics and opponents, often using vague and broadly drawn laws. In Syria, many detainees were forcibly disappeared after they were seized by government forces. In Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), detainees were frequently subjected to enforced disappearance: cut off from the outside world, deprived of legal protection and tortured to force “confessions” that courts used to convict them at trial. Detention without trial was widely used: Israeli authorities held hundreds of Palestinians 51