CAIRO - The Saudi authorities have started investigating Egyptian activist Ahmed el-Gizawi, who has been arrested, they say, for trying to smuggle into Saudi Arabia a huge quantity of the anti-anxiety medicine Xanax, which is banned in the country, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reports on Tuesday. However, activists said he is being held because of a court case he launched in Cairo against King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi National Society for Human Rights (SNSHR) said that it has tasked lawyer Suleiman el-Genini to represent the Egyptian activist. El-Gizawi was quoted yesterday by a Saudi newspaper as saying that he had met with el-Gizawi at the premises of the investigative body in Jeddah and discussed the case with him. El-Genini said that el-Gizawi categorically denied that he had been insulted or abused while being taken to and from investigations. The Chairman of the SNSHR, Hussein el-Sherif, said that el-Gizawi stressed that he has been given all his legal rights and has been able to contact his family in Egypt. El-Sherif stressed that the SNSHR is very concerned that el-Gizawi is well treated. As for the possible date for a possible trial for el-Gizawi, el-Sherif said that Saudi system specifies a period of investigation and detention of between five to six months, adding that lawyer is allowed to attend every session in the investigation. Omar el-Kholi, the legal adviser to the Saudi Human Rights Commission (SHRC), said that any lawyer, who wants, has the right to defend el-Gizawi, adding that the SHRC will continually monitor the investigations into el-Gizawi, until he is referred to court. "It will also monitor his trial in order to guarantee that he gets his legal rights and ensure the trial proceeds according to the Saudi legal system,” el-Kholi stressed. Drugs are allowed in Saudi Arabia, provided that their owner gets a licence from the Ministry of Health. The licence, which is valid for a year and can be renewed, should contain the date of its issue and specify the drugs in possession of the owner. Last month, Saudi Arabia closed its Embassy in Cairo and recalled its Ambassador, after days of protests by Egyptian activists angered by its detention of el-Gizawi. Despite longstanding complaints against the treatment of Egyptians in the oil-rich Kingdom, the authorities in the past would have moved quickly to quash any attempt to voice public anger against the Kingdom or its rulers. But, in the current atmosphere, Egyptians feel they have earned the right to express their views in public, and the authorities are less eager to resort to violence to silence them, even if they are imperilling crucial relations with an important ally.
