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.