A United Arab Emirates court has sentenced 43 Emiratis to life imprisonment for “terrorist” links, state media said on Wednesday, following a mass trial strongly criticised by UN experts and rights groups.
According to human rights groups, the 84 defendants brought before the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court included government critics and human rights activists, most of whom have been jailed since a similar trial against 94 people in 2013.
An Abu Dhabi court sentenced 43 defendants to life imprisonment for the crime of “creating, establishing and managing a terrorist organisation linked to the banned Muslim Brotherhood,” the official WAM news agency said.
Ten others were sentenced to 10-15 years in prison, one accused was acquitted and 24 cases were declared inadmissible, WAM reported. It did not give details of the remaining cases.
The defendants can still appeal the verdict before the federal Supreme Court.
The trial, which began in December, has been condemned by human rights groups and United Nations experts who have accused the oil-rich Gulf monarchy of suppressing dissent.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, most of the defendants have been in prison for more than a decade since the “UAE 94” trial began 11 years ago.
But UAE authorities say the latest charges are “substantially different” from those laid in 2013, which did not include allegations of financing a “terrorist organisation”.
– ‘Violent incidents’ –
The UAE has not named the 84 defendants, but the Britain-based monitor Emirates Detainees Advocacy Centre has identified more than 70, most of whom are already in jail.
Joy Shea, HRW’s UAE researcher, said the latest verdict was a “mockery of justice”, calling it “another nail in the coffin of the UAE’s nascent civil society”.
According to Shea, those sentenced to life imprisonment include Emirati academic Nasser bin Ghaith, who has been jailed since August 2015 for his social media posts.
Shea said prominent human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, who has been in custody since 2017, is also likely to be convicted, though details of his sentencing remain unclear.
Amnesty International called it a “brazen miscarriage of justice” and accused it of violating fair trial rules.
“The prosecution of 84 Emiratis at once, including 26 prisoners of conscience and well-known human rights defenders, is a veiled attempt to punish dissent,” said Devin Kenny, Amnesty’s UAE researcher.
The UAE has denied any wrongdoing.
WAM said the court “guaranteed the defendants all their rights”.
The report said they were attempting to “plan and repeat violent incidents” that would “lead to the killing and injuring of people in intersections and streets.”
– ‘Deeply regressive’ –
The United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven absolute monarchies, bans criticism of its rulers and any speech that could cause or incite social unrest.
Defamation and verbal and written insults, whether published or made in private, are offences punishable by fines and imprisonment.
In 2012, in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East, the UAE carried out targeted arrests and prosecutions of dozens of Emirati dissidents demanding political reform.
About 60 of the “UAE 94” have been prosecuted and are in prison for alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that is outlawed in the Gulf country.
In a letter sent to UAE authorities in January, independent UN experts said they were concerned that the latest proceedings against 84 defendants reflect “a broader pattern of repression of dissent and civil society in the UAE.”
He questioned “alleged irregularities”, such as “the use of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment to obtain forced confessions”.
Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, said the latest charges “relate to the same conduct for which many of these defendants were first prosecuted almost a decade ago”.
He told an expert panel convened by the Geneva Press Club in March that the trial was a “seriously retrograde step” and “a horrific example of the abuse of counter-terrorism measures against civil society.”
Last week, HRW said many defendants had been kept incommunicado for at least a year and reported abuse including physical torture, lack of access to medicine, constant loud music and forced nudity.
HRW said the wealthy country’s allies, including the United States, Britain and the European Union, should speak out about “unfair mass prosecutions”.
“Emirati officials have long used their country’s economic and security ties to deflect criticism of their rights record, but rarely, if ever, has the silence of their allies been so deafening,” HRW’s Shia said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
