Persistent UAE´s efforts to maintain critics behind bars: a new mass trial

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has invested deeply into portraying itself as a progressive, tolerant and human rights-compliant state. This strategy, however, as in other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, clashes with a reality in which activists and dissidents are detained and tried for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association. The recent[…]

UAE fabricates new charges against detainees during COP28: the contradictory collaboration with false progressist states

On the 11th of December 2023, the NGO Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center (EDAC) reported that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has initiated a new mass trial against more than 80 emirates. Arguably, the trial represents a continuation of the infamous UAE 94 case, where numerous citizens were arrested for political views. In the latest proceeding,[…]

UAE Lawyer Mohamed al-Roken Faces Seventh Year Arbitrarily Imprisoned

Mohamed al-Roken is a prominent lawyer in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He was detained on 17 July 2012 while on his way to a police station and held incommunicadofor months. Al-Roken’s trial began in March 2013, where he was tried with 93 other defendants, and ultimately convicted and sentenced to 10 year’s imprisonment on[…]

The UAE Releases Activist Abdul Rahman Bin Sobeih Al-Suwaidi After Forcing Him to Publicly Deny He Was Mistreated in Prison

On 16 May 2019, United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan pardoned and released activist Abdul Rahman Bin Sobeih Al-Suwaidi after public interviews where Al-Suwaidi was forced to deny the torture and mistreatment he endured in the prisons and to condemn his reform group. While the freedom of Al-Suwaidi is welcome, concerns[…]

UAE 94: Five Years, No Progress

This spring marks the five-year anniversary of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) prosecution of the “UAE 94” – 94 peaceful political activists who were charged in 2013 because of their dissident activities in 2011. The defendants came from all walks of life, and were on trial because they advocated for political reforms in the UAE.[…]