The UAE continues to deny Ahmed Mansour's travel for 5 years

The  United Arab Emirates (UAE) continue to deny the activist Ahmed Mansour's legitimate right to travel for nearly five years.

Mansour, a human rights defender from the UAE, remained trapped and unable to leave his country because of the travel ban imposed in 2012 as punishment for his activism.

He had previously spent nearly eight months in prison for allegedly insulting the rulers of the UAE - a charge he denies.

Mansour says human rights conditions are deteriorating in the country.

"There are thousands of peaceful activists languishing in jail," he says. "Hundreds have been forcibly disappeared and tortured, hundreds lost their citizenship, hundreds are on travel bans, and women are struggling to get their minimum basic rights," he said.

In an interview with the New Arab, Mansour accused Britain of helping to enable repression.

"May's government provides the Gulf regimes with the tools to squash civil society and peaceful dissent," he says. "Human rights are of no interest to them whatsoever."

In the UAE, scores of political activists have been jailed since 2011, some of them subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.