This week marks the 4th anniversary of Ahmed Mansoor's prison sentence

On 31st December 2018, the UAE's State Security Court upheld a 10-year prison sentence and a 1 million dirham (€236,000) fine against HRD Ahmed Mansoor based on an earlier court's ruling on charges related to damaging the country's reputation and spreading false information online.

On 29th May 2018, Mansoor was sentenced to 10 years in prison for social media posts criticising human rights violations carried out by the Emirati government. He had been held in pre-trial detention for more than a year.

He was convicted of “insulting the 'status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols' including its leaders” and of “seeking to damage the relationship of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with its neighbours by publishing false reports and information on social media.”

Ahmed Mansoor is one of the few voices within the UAE that provides a credible independent assessment of human rights developments in the country. 

In 2015, he won the prestigious ‘Martin Ennals Award’ for Human Rights Defenders as a result of his continued work on human rights despite a crackdown on human rights defenders in UAE. Ahmed Mansoor regularly raises concerns on arbitrary detention, torture or ill or degrading treatment, failure to meet international standards for fair trials, non-independence of the judiciary, domestic laws that violate international law, and other violations of civil rights. He has been jailed for his efforts, and is currently banned from travelling.

In early September 2019, human rights defender Ahmed Mansour started an open ending hunger strike in protest against the solitary confinement and the torture he is facing at Al-Sadr prison. The human rights defender is being subjected to frequent harassment by the prison guards.

Despite repeated calls by human rights organisations and international mechanisms over the past years, the UAE authorities have not allowed international experts or independent monitors access to Mansoor in prison until today.