United Arab Emirates

The United Nations Human Rights Council is being asked by a colation of international NGOs to ensure that the UAE’s anti-terrorism law is not used as a tool to target, imprison, intimidate and impede the work of rights defenders.

The United Arab Emirates’ deeply flawed new counterterrorism law will enable the courts to convict peaceful government critics as terrorists and sentence them to death.

UAE activist Osama al-Najjar has been sentenced to 3 years in jail and a fine of half a million AED, for his human rights activities and the solidarity he has expressed through Twitter for his father Hussein al-Najjar.

An Emirati English-language newspaper fired Ugandan journalist Yasin Kakande for writing a book that was strongly critical of the conditions of migrant workers and media censorship in the United Arab Emirates.

Osama Najjar, a netizen and activist, has been held since 17 March in an unknown location. Najjar is the son of Hoseen Najjar, who is serving a 10-year jail sentence on charges of links to the Muslim Brotherhood and trying to overthrow the UAE government.

Since punitive legislation governing use of the internet was passed in November 2012 in the UAE, at least six people have been sent to prison for comments made on Twitter.

Abdel Wahed al-Badi and Said Buraimi, both Emirati citizens, were sentenced to five years in prison each, while Mahmoud Al-Geda, a Qatari citizen, was sentenced to seven on charges of providing assistance to and being members of a “banned clandestine organisation”.

The United Arab Emirates stand accused of blocking criticism over their human rights record, according to international monitoring group Human Rights Watch.

Reporters Without Borders has written to Gabriela Knaul, the UN special rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, expressing concern about deep flaws in the UAE’s judicial system and the lack of impartiality in the sentences imposed on information providers.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates refused to allow Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, to enter the country on 24 January.

The Emirati Federal Supreme Court sentenced 20 Egyptians residing the UAE and 10 Emirati citizens to a range of prison terms on charges of establishing a Muslim Brotherhood branch and gathering funds to support the Brotherhood in Egypt.

According to a statement from the US Department of State, the US citizen charged under the UAE’s Cybercrime Act and sentenced to a year in prison was released and deported after getting credit against his sentence for time served and for “good behavior.”

Online activists and human rights advocates Mohamed Salem Al-Zumer and Abdul Rahman Omar Bajubair have been sentenced to three years and five years in jail respectively for tweeting.

An American citizen is being held in a maximum-security prison in the UAE after posting a satirical YouTube video. He is the first foreign national to be charged with the country’s draconian cybercrimes decree.

In the United Arab Emirates, a series of show trials and convictions against online activists highlight an authoritarian regime’s attempts to quell growing dissent among a repressed citizenry.

Waleed Al-Shehhi, arrested on 11 May, is the second Emirati citizen to have been convicted under a cyber-crime law for posting information about the UAE 94 trial.