Photo credit: Human Rights Watch
On July 10, 2024, at least 40 persons were sentenced to prison for life in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while five more were sentenced to 15 years. According to the state-run Emirates News Agency, 84 individuals were being tried for establishing a “terrorist organization” in a mass trial launched on December 7, 2023. The charges and the names of the defendants have been kept secret and information about who has been convicted has been gathered through inside information. Among those tried were Emirati human rights activists and prisoners of conscience, according to Amnesty International.
One of the people convicted to life in prison is Nasser bin Ghaith, who is an economics professor that is an outspoken critic of the Emirati government. He has previously taught at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. Dr. bin Ghaith was first detained in 2015 for criticizing the Egyptian and Emirati governments on social media. After almost 2 years in detention, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2017. In protest of his unjust detention and the mistreatment and torture he was subjected to in prison, Dr. bin Ghaith went on multiple hunger strikes between 2017 and 2020. He was also denied medical care in prison.
International NGOs have strongly criticized the trial process and the verdict as being in gross violation of international law, including legal principles such as “double jeopardy” and “retroactive criminal law”, which mean that a person cannot be convicted twice on the same charge and that a person cannot be tried for committing an action that was only later declared a crime.
Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) calls on the Emirati government to immediately drop the charges against the defendants in the UAE84 mass trial, like Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith, who have been subjected to a grossly unfair judicial process. ESW further calls for an end to the weaponization of pre-trial detentions and the inhumane treatment of detainees and prisoners. We invite the members of the international community devoted to upholding human rights globally to join our call.
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