UAE Confirms 15-Year Sentence for Ahmed Mansoor
An Emirati court upheld an abusive 15-year sentence on March 4, 2025, against the prominent Emirati human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, who was convicted following a fundamentally unfair trial, Human Rights Watch said today.
The State Security Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court rejected Mansoor’s appeal along with dozens of others for those convicted in the country’s second largest unfair mass trial. On July 10, 2024, the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court convicted 53 defendants and sentenced them to terms ranging from 10 years to life in prison.
“This latest decision shows how the UAE continues to target a man who courageously stood up to his abusive government even when very few would dare,” said Joey Shea, United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The UAE should be celebrating Mansoor’s contributions, not sentencing him in yet another sham trial.”
The court dismissed Mansoor’s appeal of his July 2024 sentence on procedural grounds, said the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center, a human rights organization supporting imprisoned human rights defenders in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In July 2024, the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court sentenced Mansoor to 15 years in prison. In a statement released in January 2024, Emirati authorities accused the 84 defendants of establishing and managing a clandestine terrorist organization in the UAE known as the “Justice and Dignity Committee.” The charges appear to come from the UAE’s abusive 2014 counterterrorism law, which sets out punishments of up to life in prison and even death for anyone who sets up, organizes, or runs such an organization.
Mansoor is one of the UAE’s most prominent human rights defenders. He received the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2015 and is a member of the Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa Advisory Committee.
He has been arbitrarily imprisoned in an isolation cell since security forces raided his home just before midnight on March 20, 2017. In May 2018, the Abu Dhabi Court of Appeals’ State Security Chamber sentenced Mansoor to 10 years in prison on charges of “spreading false news” to “harm the reputation of the state,” entirely related to his human rights activities. The court also fined him 1,000,000 Emirati dirhams (around US$272,000). Mansoor was the last Emirati human rights defender still working openly in the UAE at that time.
In December 2018, the UAE’s Federal Supreme Court, the court of last resort, upheld his sentence, quashing his final chance at early release.
All charges on which he was convicted were based solely on his human rights advocacy, including using email and WhatsApp to communicate with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations.
He was still serving that sentence when he was sentenced again in July 2024. Both trials were closed, and the authorities have refused all requests to make public the charge sheet and court rulings.
The decision to uphold the July 2024 verdict is just the latest salvo in the UAE’s vicious campaign against Mansoor. He has faced repeated intimidation, harassment, and death threats from the UAE authorities and their supporters, including a sophisticated spyware attack by the Emirati government.
Over the past eight years, the United Nations and independent rights groups have documented that the UAE government has held Mansoor in solitary confinement without access to reading materials, television, or radio. Since December 2017, he has been denied eyeglasses, most personal hygiene items, and, until recently, a bed or a mattress in his cell.
These measures violate the prohibition against torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. UAE authorities deny that they have subjected Mansoor to such treatment, while refusing to allow independent observers to visit him.
“Upholding Ahmed Mansoor’s sentence from the latest sham trial is a blatant attempt by the Emirati government to undermine justice for its most celebrated human rights defender,” Shea said.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/03/07/uae-ahmed-mansoors-15-year-sentence-upheld