Video: Former prisoner in UAE demands Justice

The story of a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, Khaled Ahmad, which tells of his arbitrary detention in the UAE, quite aptly encapsulates this darker side of the Emirati state.

In May 2007, Khaled landed a job as an IT technician for the Emirates International Investments Company (EIIC) in Abu Dhabi, a business that is owned by Saif bin Zayed al Nahyan, Emirati Minister of Interior, and Deputy Prime Minister.

On 3 April 2010, Khaled, and his American fiancée Bethany boarded an Etihad Airways flight to Abu Dhabi International Airport after a summer holiday in Damascus, Syria.

 Before passing through passport control, Khaled claims he was taken to one side by uniformed Emirati security officials. Perplexed and scared, Khaled's American fiancée Bethany was anxiously sitting in the waiting room. 

Emirati guards ordered her to go home, but when she refused to leave without her fiancée, authorities threatened her with jail time. Terrified, she made her way to her house in Abu Dhabi.

Without any explanation, Khaled said he was blindfolded and put into a car where guards tied up his hands and legs and asked him where he lived. 

Khaled maintains that he was then taken to an unknown location in Abu Dhabi where he would stay in solitary confinement for five months and endure all manner of ill-treatment at the hands of Emirati security guards.

Eventually, Khaled was informed that he was being held under investigation for leaking important company documents, allegations, something that Khaled strongly denies to this day.

After three months of torture, solitary confinement and family harassment, UAE officials decided Khaled was in fact innocent after being unable to find any evidence linking him to the leak.