March 2023 – ساند معتقلي الإمارات

27Mar, 2023

Free Rights Defender Nasser bin Ghaith

Dr Nasser Bin Ghaith is an economist, lecturer at the Abu Dhabi branch of the Paris-Sorbonne University. He was part of the so-called “UAE5”, a group of five activists imprisoned from April to November 2011 on charges of “publicly insulting” UAE officials. They were eventually pardoned and released. His economic commentaries in the Emirati media were often critical of government policy.

On 18 August 2015, Nasser bin Ghaith was forcibly disappeared from his place of work and kept in a secret location for 9 months, where he was subjected to beatings and other ill-treatment. He was denied phone calls to both his lawyer and his family. He was then transferred to a maximum security block in Al Sadr prison. On 18 January 2017, his case was transferred to the Federal Appeal Court. However, the hearing was brief and his requests ignored.

On his second hearing, in May 2016, he claimed that he had been tortured. The judge dismissed his claim and refused to order any further independent investigation. Although he is currently suffering from serious medical issues, including high blood pressure, he has been denied appropriate specialised treatment.

On 29 March 2017, Nasser bin Ghaith was sentenced to 10 years in prison facing 5 charges related to his rights to freedom of expression and association. He was charged of “posting false information” deemed to “harm the reputation of the state and its institutions”, by claiming that his past trial, that of the UAE5, was unfair and that the defendants had been tortured.

At the last hearing, Nasser bin Ghaith was not able to present his defence and his lawyer was absent due to last minute changes to the order of the day.

27Mar, 2023

Free Rights Defender Mohamed al-Roken

Dr. Mohamed Al-Roken is an Emirati lawyer, academic and human rights defender from Dubai. He was a member of the International Association of Lawyers (UIA) and the International Bar Association, and the president of the UAE’s Jurists Association before its arbitrary dissolution by the authorities in 2011.

Dr. Al-Roken has authored books on human rights, constitutional law, and counterterrorism among other legal and political topics. He dedicated his career to providing legal assistance to victims of human rights violations in the UAE.

Dr. Al-Roken has played a central role in the human rights work in the UAE, for which he was nominated and selected for different human rights awards. The latest he won was the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize in 2017.

While being internationally acclaimed, Dr. Al-Roken faced constant pressure in the UAE. In 2011, Dr. Al-Roken and 132 others, including lawyers, judges, academics and journalists, signed a petition for political reform, calling on the UAE government to grant legislative authority to the Federal National Council, and to ensure universal and free elections of its members.

Later that year, here presented a group of five activists, known as the “UAE 5”, including human rights defenders Ahmed Mansoor and Dr. Nasser Bin Ghaith, whom the authorities arrested and charged with “insulting the heads of the State”, in reference to their online activism and criticism of the government’s policy.

This was one of the countless cases Dr. Al-Roken took up despite the serious risks he was facing in doing so.

Among other human rights cases he took on was that of a group of seven Emirati activists, later known as the “UAE 7”, who were arbitrarily stripped of their nationality as a form of reprisal for their peaceful activism. Dr. Al-Roken was arrested shortly after he publicly announced his intention to appeal the presidential decree stripping them of their Emirati citizenship.

His arrest was in clear violation of UN Basic Principles on the role of Lawyers, which provides that “Governments shall ensure that lawyers are able to perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference [and] shall not suffer, or be threatened with, prosecution or administrative, economic or other sanctions for any action taken in accordance with recognized professional duties, standards and ethics.”

On 17 July 2012, State Security officers arbitrarily arrested Dr. Al-Roken while he was driving to a Dubai police station to inquire about his son and his son-in-law, whom they arrested hours earlier. Following his arrest, Dr. Mohammed Al-Roken was detained in solitary confinement at an undisclosed location for 3 months, without access to his lawyer and his family. He was tried alongside 93 other activists, in the case that became known as the “UAE 94”.

The group faced severe charges including “plotting to overthrow the government.” During this grossly unfair trial, Dr. Al-Roken continued his activism by highlighting flaws in the administration of justice and pleaded the case of his co-defendants before the court. On 2 July 2013, the Federal Supreme Court convicted and sentenced Dr. Al-Roken to 10 years in prison.

The court also handed down prison terms between seven and fifteen years to 68 other defendants, including eight in absentia. In stark contrast to the international standards the UAE asserts it upholds, defendants did not have the right to appeal their sentences.

27Mar, 2023

Free Rights Defender Ahmed Mansoor

Ahmed Mansoor, a 51-year-old Emirati engineer, poet, and father of four. He is also the UAE’s most celebrated human rights activist. Prior to his arrest almost three years ago, Mansoor had dedicated over a decade of his life to advocating for human rights in his country and the wider Middle East and North Africa region, undeterred by multiple earlier government attempts to silence him.

UAE authorities detained Mansoor and four others for six months in 2011, placed him on a travel ban since, and orchestrated several attempts over the years to hack into his devices using sophisticated spyware.

In a late-night raid minutes before midnight on March 20, 2017, UAE security forces stormed Mansoor’s home and arrested him again.

For more than a year following his arrest, Mansoor’s family, friends, and colleagues did not know where authorities were detaining him.

He had no access to a lawyer and was granted only two half-hour family visits, six months apart, in a location different to his place of detention.

In the early days following his arrest, local UAE news sources claimed authorities had detained Mansoor on suspicion of using social media sites to publish “flawed information” and “false news” to “incite sectarian strife and hatred” and “harm the reputation of the state.”

In May 2018, the Abu Dhabi Court of Appeals sentenced Mansoor to 10 years in prison on charges stemming solely from his peaceful criticism of government policies and his modest calls for human rights reform.

17Mar, 2023

Citizenship of 19 members of the detainees’ families revoked

As part of its collective punishment policy, UAE strips citizenship from 19 family members of political prisoners.

Although Article 15 of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights (UDHR) states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality”, citizenship revocation has been used as a punishment in the UAE.

The UAE authorities revoked the nationality of dozens of Emirati peaceful human rights activists along with their families.

Since the beginning of 2016, at least 15 cases of nationality withdrawal were reported while the total number of Emiratis who were stripped of their nationality has reached 60 individuals.

Those whose citizenship has been stripped will not be able to gain access to basic services or travel overseas.

In 2016, the UAE has revoked the citizenship of three Emiratis who are the children of political prisoner Mohammed Abdulrazzaq al-Siddiq.

Asma, 29, Doa’a, 25, and Omar, 23, are the children of Mohammed Abdulrazzaq al-Siddiq, who was jailed for 10 years for plotting to overthrow the state, in a controversial 2013 trial of 94 political activists with links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The citizenship revocation affected several of the accused in the “UAE 94” case, a mass trial that was condemned by many human rights organisations.

Moreover, several UN special rapporteurs and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention classified the procedure as an unfair trial that lacked due process and violated international standards.

17Mar, 2023

56 Emirati Prisoners of Conscience Held in Indefinite Detention

56 prisoners of conscience are continued to be held in UAE jails without any legal basis after ending their prison sentences, but were not released by Emirati authorities.

They remain held in flagrant violation of national and international laws, in what is called as “indefinite detention”.

Those indefinitely detained remain arrested without due process, which violates international law – namely the right to liberty and the right to a fair trial as well as the UAE’s own laws regarding fair trials and due process.

9Mar, 2023

SANID Campaign Launch Seminar

SANID Campaign, Stand up for UAE detainee, held on Tuesday evening an online webinar introducing the campaign’s goals and work.

Moderated by Aziz Mahmoud, research officer at the International Campaign for Freedom in the Emirates (ICFUAE), the webinar included the executive director of the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center (EDAC) Hamad Al Shamsi, Emirati human rights defender Jenan Almarzooqi, director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GC4HR) Khalid Ibrahim, director of MENA Center for Human Rights Enas Osman, the British academic Matthew Hedges, and the director of ALQST organisation Julia Legner.

Al Shamsi shed light on the plight of political detainees in the UAE jails, saying that 60 Emirati key figures have been detained in UAE jails for more than ten years, including academics and activists.

More than three quarters of those detainees have completed their prison sentences but are still in arbitrary detention, Al Shamsi pointed out.

He added that the UAE authorities continued to arbitrarily detaining human rights defenders and political activists such as Ahmed Mansour and Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith, calling on the international community to press for their immediate release.

Al Shamsi said that the Emirati female prisoner Alia Abdel Nour died in prison after being denied medical treatment, saying that the UAE authorities are ready to keep prisoners in prison till their death.

The time has come to achieve justice for those prisoners, Al Shamsi added, calling on Emirati authorities to respect the prisoners’ rights and release them.

The Emirati woman human rights defender, Janan Al-Marzouqi, shed light on the violations and harassment that families of the detainees are subjected to.

The families of the detainees are subjected to systematic reprisals including discrimination, restrictions on their study, work, and medical treatment, in addition to citizenship revocation and travel ban.

The daughter of Emirati prisoner of conscience Abdulsalam Darwish pointed out that the UAE authorities revoked the citizenship of 19 members of the detainees’ families and denied the identity documents to 22 others, and prevented the travel of more than 30 others.

She further pointed out that the UAE authorities also revoked the citizenship of all her family members.

For his part, the director of GC4HR, Khalid Ibrahim, highlighted the violations that Emirati prisoners of conscience are subjected to in the UAE secret prisons and counselling centres.

56 prisoners of conscience are currently held in UAE prisons after completing their sentences, but the UAE authorities refuse to release them, he said.

According to the Emirati law, any prisoner who spends more than three-quarters of his prison sentence can be released before his release date. However, this is not applied to the Emirati political prisoners, Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim pointed out that the so-called Counselling Centres do not provide any support for detainees, saying that it is only used as a pretext to keep the prisoners behind bars. He urged human rights organisations to make all possible efforts to pressure for their release.

In her turn, Enas Osman, director of MENA, shed light on the human rights violations practiced by the UAE State Security Apparatus. The UAE State Security Law grants the State Security Apparatus all powers to prevent any political activism in the country, she said.

Taking advantage of the UAE repressive laws such as the ‘Anti-Terrorism’ Law and the ‘Counsel Law’, the State Security Apparatus is practicing unlimited repression, Osman said, describing these legislations as among the most repressive laws in the MENA region.

On the other hand, the British academic Matthew Hedges emphasised the importance of the SANID Campaign, stressing that silence is not an option.

Director of ALQST, Julia Legner, also stressed the need for an international intervention to stop human rights violations in the UAE.

Although the European Parliament and some international bodies have already issued resolutions on this case, the international community must activate these decisions and hold the UAE authorities accountable for these violations, she concluded.