US Senator Calls For The Release Of Political Prisoners Languishing In UAE Jails
The United States Democratic Senator Dick Durban has called on the authorities of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners unjustly detained in the country.
In a speech on the Senate floor, U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) this week shared the stories of political prisoners languishing in jails around the world for nothing more than advocating for human rights and political freedoms and called for their immediate release.
Durbin noted that these brave souls – journalists, activists, opposition politicians – are often cruelly led to believe they, or their efforts to push for freedoms, are forgotten, which Durbin wanted to ensure is not the case.
He specifically shared the stories of four political prisoners – Raif Badawi, Waleed Abu al-Khair, Senator Leila DeLima, and Emirati human rights defender, Ahmed Mansoor.
"Let me remind Raif Badawi, Waleed Abu Al-Khair, Senator Leila DeLima, Maria Ressa, and Ahmed Mansoor, we have not forgotten you. We will continue to back you,” he said.
Ahmed Mansoor is a prominent human rights defender who has worked extensively with international rights organisations to raise awareness of human rights abuses in the UAE. He serves on the advisory boards of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) and Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. In 2015, he won the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.
On 20 March 2017, he was arrested in a midnight raid on his home and later sentenced to ten years in prison for “defaming the UAE through social media channels”. In the weeks before his arrest, Mansoor had criticized the UAE’s prosecutions of other activists for speech “crimes” and tweeted about rights violations in Egypt and Yemen.
Earlier this month, dozens of human rights groups, including ICFUAE, renewed calls to free Ahmed Mansoor on the fourth anniversary of his arrest. For all of his four-year detention, he has been subjected to inhumane conditions, in solitary confinement in a 4-square meter cell without a bed or mattress to sleep on.
