IRELAND: Despite the controversy over President Mary McAleese's recent visit to Saudi Arabia, a leading human rights activist says it had a "really positive" effect.
In Dublin this week, Ibrahim Al Muqaiteeb told The Irish Times her presence at the Jeddah Economic Forum had sent "a very powerful message" because it showed the Saudi people that a woman held the highest office in her own country, as head of state.
Mr Al Muqaiteeb, a journalist, says the human rights situation in his country is "outrageous" with discrimination on the basis of gender and religious affiliation as well as more general infringements of rights of the individual such as freedom of expression and association.
Although reluctant to talk about himself, he says he was arrested and tortured in the early 1990s which gave rise to back injuries that still require surgery.
He says that in the past two years there have has been "all kinds of intimidation against me, my family and members of my organisation".
He founded the Human Rights First Society in November 2002. He submitted an application to the Saudi minister of labour and social affairs for a licence to operate as a non-governmental organisation but says he never received a reply.
Undeterred, he went ahead and called a press conference in the capital, Riyadh, in January 2003 and declared the society would carry out its work even without official permission.
A month later he took part in a political discussion on the Al-Jazeera TV network and Saudi authorities interrogated him for 10 days as a result. In March, 2003, he was refused permission to attend an Amnesty International workshop in Morocco and his passport was withdrawn.
The government destroyed efforts to set up a Human Rights First website, he claims. "The whole address evaporated." He says another member of Human Rights First, Khalid Al Omair, spent six months in jail as punishment for appearing on Al-Jazeera.
Mr Al Muqaiteeb was refused permission to travel to Ireland in 2003 and 2005 to attend conferences organised by Front Line, the Blackrock-based group for the protection of human rights defenders. He was finally allowed to leave the country last month for surgery on his back.
Despite his criticisms of the Saudi regime, he warmly praised the work of Turki Al-Sudeiry, who was appointed last October as head of the new Human Rights Commission set up by King Abdullah and who secured permission for Mr Al Muqaiteeb to travel outside the country.
The schedule for his three-day visit included meetings with the human rights subcommittee of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee, Fine Gael MEP Simon Coveney and the Department of Foreign Affairs. He travels next to the US for further meetings with politicians and officials.
On the recent controversy over the Muhammad cartoons, Mr Al Muqaiteeb said there was "mismanagement" on both sides.
Publication of the cartoons was "unwise" but he could not condone the resulting violence either. "It was only the fanatics on both sides who benefited from this," he said.