Ahmed MANSOOR
Ahmed Mansoor. Photo credit: Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center
Emirati poet, blogger and human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor continued to serve a 10-year prison term. In July, Mansoor was further convicted in the notorious UAE 84 trial (see Mohamed al-Roken above), and sentenced to an additional 15 years in prison for allegedly supporting the Justice and Dignity Committee.
On 20 March 2017, Mansoor was arrested in the middle of the night at his home where he lived with his wife and four sons. He was convicted on 29 May 2018 of ‘insulting the 'status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols' including its leaders’ and of ‘seeking to damage the relationship of the UAE with its neighbours by publishing false reports and information on social media.’ He was sentenced by the State Security Chamber of the Federal Appeal Court to 10 years’ imprisonment, followed by three years of surveillance and a fine of 1,000,000 Emirati Dirhams (around USD $270,000).
The sentence was upheld on 31 December 2018 by the State Security Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court. Mansoor’s trial was widely viewed as grossly unfair and lacked the minimum international standards of fair trial and due process. The European Parliament, United Nations Special Rapporteurs, and human rights organisations have all called for his immediate and unconditional release.
In 2019, Mansoor started a hunger strike to protest poor prison conditions and his unfair trial. He has reportedly been kept in an isolation ward in Al-Sadr prison in Abu Dhabi, where he is being held in ‘terrible conditions‘ in a cell with no bed, no water and no access to a shower, which has significantly impacted his health. The UAE has repeatedly denied him access to family visits.
In September 2024, the annual report of the UN Secretary-General about reprisals against those who cooperate with the UN mechanisms cited Mansoor’s case. This was the eighth time that the Secretary-General had denounced reprisals against him, having previously raised concerns in 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Mansoor’s literary analysis and poetry were published in many Emirati newspapers and a collection of his poems أبعد من عدم Beyond Failure was published in 2010. The 2015 Martin Ennals Laureate, and a member of the advisory boards of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, Mansoor was the last human rights defender openly working in the UAE. His love for poetry contributed to his fierce defence of freedom of expression and human rights.