Muscat: Omani security forces picked up a blogger from Sinaw town, about 198-km east of Muscat and detained him on Monday evening, according to an independent human rights group in Oman.
The Monitor of Human Rights in Oman has posted on the group’s page on the social media networking website Facebook that Diab Al Amiri was taken away from his house at about 6.30pm on Monday after he did not respond to the calls by the security agencies, asking him to meet them.
“He received a call saying that they were calling him from the General Command of Police and asked him to meet them,” the Facebook post stated. The post further said that Al Amiri refused to go and meet them in the absence of any formal summons or warrant.
The Group also claimed that the security forces stormed Al Amiri’s house with a strong presence of pose before arresting him. “He has been taken to an undisclosed location.”
The officers, according to the group, have taken mobile phones of Al Amiri and his brother, who they alleged was manhandled.
The Group believes that Al Amiri, who has health problems, could have been picked up after he wrote about a protest in Mudhaibi, about 160-km east of Muscat. “He wrote and posted pictures on the Internet about the protests by citizens against a proposed poultry farm in Mudhaibi village,” the group claimed in their posts on Facebook.
However, they also suspect that there could be some other reasons like Al Amiri expressing solidarity with the activists who were pardoned on March 21 by Sultan Qaboos Bin Saeed.
