Human Rights Watch urged the interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abd al-‘Aziz Al Sa'ud, to order the immediate release of peaceful dissidents, including Nadhir al-Majid, a writer and teacher arrested on April 17. . ..…

Michael Scammell is the author of biographies of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Arthur Koestler, and has translated many books from Russian. ..…