Ahmed Mansoor – the Emirates’ most prominent human rights defender – finally has been taken to court after a year in arbitrary detention [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/03/21/emirates-one-year-later-human-rights-defender-ahmed-mansoors-whereabouts-remain-unknown/].
In the weeks leading up to his arrest, Mansoor had used Twitter to call for the release of human rights activist Osama Al-Najjar, who remains in prison despite having completed a three-year prison sentence in March 2017 for his peaceful activities on Twitter; as well as prominent academic and economist Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith. The latter, who was jailed in a previous case with Mansoor in 2011, was also held incommunicado for nine months after his subsequent arrest in August 2015. He continued to be held in solitary confinement after court proceedings began, remaining in solitary for 19 months. On 29 March 2017, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for critical comments he had made online about human rights violations in the UAE and Egypt. On 2 April 2017, Dr. Bin Ghaith began a hunger strike to protest his sentence, which violated his rights to freedom of expression and fair trial. On 25 February 2018, Dr. Bin Ghaith began another hunger strike to protest poor conditions in Abu Dhabi’s notorious Al-Razeen prison, a maximum security prison in the desert used to hold activists, government critics, and human rights defenders. On 2 April 2018, GCHR learned that Dr. Bin Ghaith had been forced to end his recent hunger strike earlier due to threats made by the authorities to restrict visits after news of his protest became known….
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