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Sexual assaults and fabrication of cases against journalists and activists:

Police authorities in most Arab countries have wide experience in torture and fabricating political cases and physical assaults as a result of training and the large budgets that these authorities receive.

However, because these methods are occasionally insufficient in deterring some political and human rights activists, and journalists, some authorities have started to prepare policemen for what is known as "dirty operations". These operations, despite being few, have wide and long term effects in spreading fear amongst ordinary citizens and amongst some activists who fear that their turn will come. Such operations include fabricating criminal cases, committing sexual assaults, and scandals aiming at defaming reputations and breaking the spirits of the victims, in addition to spreading fear amongst others, sending a clear message to whoever thinks to criticise or oppose symbols of the regime and its authorities.

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) published a long report titled "No Rules, No Limits", which list some very dirty operations that are used against those journalist and activists for a specific aim or to achieve several goals depending on the case.

The cases listed in the report does not cover all the Arab World, but as mentioned in the report, Tunisia, Egypt (as an example) have all established semi-governmental human rights councils, which work in apposition to independent organizations.

However, none of these councils have condemned any of the 'dirty operations' perpetrated against activists and journalists. In Tunisia, the governmental human rights council in Tunisia took no steps to condemn the sentencing of journalist Mohammed Abbou, who was imprisoned for three and a half years for an article he wrote. The Egyptian National Council for Human Rights did not lobby for an investigation into the attacks perpetrated against women journalists during the referendum in 2005.

The question is; why should we trust the "Human Rights Councils"?