The recent death of Alaa al-Siddiq, killed in a car accident on 19 June 2021 in the UK, brought into sharp focus the plight of families who have been unjustly separated from their loved ones for almost a decade. 

Alaa al-Siddiq, executive director of ALQST, a leading NGO highlighting human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, was also the daughter of “UAE-94” prisoner Mohamed al-Siddiq.

The Emirati government stripped Alaa al-Siddiq and her nine siblings of their citizenship in March 2016, telling the UN that it had “withdrawn” their citizenship because the father’s citizenship had been “revoked”. Alaa al-Siddiq fled to Qatar in 2012 and then moved to the UK in 2019.

Mohamed al-Siddiq was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the “UAE-94” trial. Prior to his conviction he was also stripped of his nationality in December 2011, after signing a petition calling for democratic reforms. The authorities said they revoked his nationality because he was linked to “suspect regional and international organizations and personalities”.

Before her death, Alaa al-Siddiq had said that no one in her immediate family had been able to speak to her father, Mohamed al-Siddiq, since 2018, when the government cut off all their communication with him.