Prisoners of conscience with expired sentences in UAE reach 39
Human rights groups said that the number of prisoners of conscience whose sentences expired in the UAE prisons reached 39, as four new detainees served their sentence time without release despite widespread international condemnations.
The Emirates Center for Human Rights stated four detainees, Ahmed Saqr Al-Suwaidi, Ahmed Saif Al-Matari, Khaled Al-Yamahi, and Najib Amiri, finished their full sentences but remained in prison.
The Center stated, “With this, the number of detainees whose sentences ended in Abu Dhabi prisons increased to 39, and the UAE authorities are still refusing to release them.”
This comes as Saeed Jumaa bin Darwish al-Falasi, the father of the prisoner of conscience Juma al-Falasi, died yesterday, Saturday, in al-Razeen prison despite the end of his sentence since mid-July.
The Center tweeted that the prison sentence of detainee Al-Falasi ended in mid-July, but “the authorities did not release him, and his father passed away with grief over his son’s absence for years. May God have mercy on him.”
The United Nations Committee Against Torture had expressed its deep concern about Abu Dhabi’s use of “counselling” centres to extend the detention of convicts indefinitely beyond the period stipulated in their sentences and called on the UAE to ensure that maximum periods of detention in counselling centres are set under the law.
The UN Committee against Torture reported that individuals arrested by state security are often deprived of their fundamental rights and are subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including incommunicado detention.
Article 13 of the Penal Institutions Law of the Federal Law of the State states that “no person may remain in the penal facility beyond the specified period.”
Prisoners of conscience are deprived of medical care and medicine for people with chronic diseases. They are deprived of blankets and clothes during the winter, despite the cold weather, which negatively affects their health and is considered torture and a form of inhumanity treatment.
