release my father to right or wrong and to end this nightmare for my family and i let's bring in amy hawthorne she's the deputy director for research at the project for middle east democracy she was on that panel and she's joining us from washington good to have you with us on al-jazeera amy so what was the message that you were trying to send out by participating on that panel the message that we were all trying to send out was to give a platform for family members of some of the many did to unjustly detained saudi citizens and in this case also a dual saudi american and to say that this mistreatment must stop those unjustly detained should be released and to show the importance that the u.s. congress places upon this issue of course the event was held in the u.s. congress and featured several members of congress speaking out as well yeah how unprecedented is it that such an event was actually held in congress and involved members. well sadly it's not completely unprecedented because of the number of human rights abuses that are occurring in saudi arabia and indeed across the middle east and