Mr. Speaker, today marks the 20th anniversary of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, one of the more effective United Nations bodies that has addressed and redressed individual cases of political prisoners who have been arbitrarily arrested, illegally detained and unjustly imprisoned in violation of international human rights law.
Indeed, the UN working group has issued important rulings in the illegal detention of Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, and helped secure her release, and in the illegal detention and imprisonment of Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo.
I am now petitioning the working group in the case of the arbitrary arrest, detention and imprisonment of Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil, one of the first political prisoners of the post-Mubarak era, who is now entering his 86th day of a hunger strike. We urgently seek his release and the UN working group can help us in this regard.