Rights groups denounce the extended arbitrary detention of activists with expired sentences
The International Center for Justice and Human Rights (ICJHR) condemned the continued arbitrary detention of activists who have completed their sentences in Emirati prisons.
The Center said in a statement that the number of prisoners with expired sentences has increased to 50, the last of whom is judge Muhammad Al-Abdouli, who finished his 10-year sentence in prison on October 11, 2022, but is still behind bars.
The Center said that detaining political and human rights activists and refusing to release them at the expiry of their sentence is a form of arbitrary detention and a violation of Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Center pointed out that 50 prisoners of conscience had served sentences ranging from 5 to 10 years after being arrested illegally and hidden in secret detention places under torture and ill-treatment.
Prisoners were abused to extract incriminating confessions, to try them without fair trial guarantees, and to sentence them to imprisonment with a final judgment by the State Security Department of the Federal Supreme Court.
They were sentenced under broad and inaccurate laws such as the Federal Law on Terrorism Crimes and the Federal Law on Information Technology Crimes. Moreover, they continued to be humiliated and ill-treated in poorly maintained prisons such as Al-Razeen, Al-Wathba and Al-Sadr.
Today, the UAE authorities have considered them among those who have a terrorist threat per Federal Law No. 7 of 2014 regarding terrorist crimes to continue to detain them in counselling centres in Al-Razeen Desert Prison.
To further abuse them by extending it indefinitely, Federal Law No. 7 of 2014 on terrorist crimes did not guarantee those convicted of being deposited in a counselling centre the right to appeal, file a judicial and administrative grievance, and contact a lawyer.
“The law did not specify a maximum period for depositing in counselling centres and leaving them open to further abuse of opponents, bloggers and political activists, and to cover up their arbitrary detention.”
The International Justice and Human Rights Commission urgently called on the UAE authorities to stop this blatant and unjustified violation by releasing all activists who have served their sentences.
And it demanded to stop their administrative detention in counselling centres and amend the anti-terrorism law without delay to conform to international human rights and fundamental freedoms standards.
