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UAE sentences prominent activist to decade in jail: media
DUBAI, May 31, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – An Emirati court has sentenced an award-
winning human rights activist to 10 years in prison for insulting the “status
and prestige of the UAE and its symbols”, pro-government media reported
Thursday.
The Abu Dhabi court also imposed a fine of one million dirhams ($275,000 or
235,000 euros) and ordered Ahmed Mansoor be placed under surveillance for
three years after his release, The National and Gulf News reported.
The 48-year-old was convicted of attempting to harm his country’s relations
with its neighbours by spreading misinformation on social media, The National
said.
Foreign journalists are not allowed to attend such trials in the United
Arab Emirates, whose ruling families rarely tolerate opposition.
Mansoor was cleared of conspiring with a “terrorist organisation”.
His court-appointed lawyer Tariq al-Shamsi had told an earlier hearing that
Mansoor should be cleared of all charges.
Mansoor’s arrest in March 2017 triggered an international outcry led by
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Mansoor, a father of four, won the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights
Defenders in 2015 for his efforts to introduce greater political and civil
rights in the UAE.
During his detention, the prosecutor accused him of using social media to
“publish false information and rumours, spread tendentious ideas that would
sow sedition, sectarianism and hatred”, state news agency WAM reported.
He was also accused of harming “national unity and social peace” and “the
state’s reputation”.
The Gulf Centre for Human Rights described his punishment as “shocking”.
The sentence “demonstrates the UAE’s brazen disregard for its obligations
under international law to respect the right to free speech as well as to
protect human rights defenders,” the group said in a statement.
Mansoor was part of a group of activists known as the UAE Five, who were
arrested in April 2011 and released later that year by a presidential pardon
— although authorities confiscated his passport and banned him from leaving
the country.
He was re-arrested in March 2017 under the Gulf state’s cyber-crime law.
BSS/AFP/RY/1744 hrs