UAE Upholds Unfair Mass Trial Convictions
An Emirati court on March 4, 2025, rejected all appeals by people convicted in the United Arab Emirates’ second-largest unfair mass trial, upholding the unfair convictions and abusive sentences of 53 human rights defenders and political dissidents, Human Rights Watch said today. The decision is final and cannot be further appealed.
On July 10, 2024, the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court convicted the 53 defendants and meted out sentences ranging from 10 years to life in prison following an unfair trial marred by due process and fair trial violations. Lawyers for the defendants appealed the convictions, two informed sources told Human Rights Watch.
“Upholding the cruel convictions and sentences against 53 of the country’s most prominent political dissidents and human rights defenders confirms that fierce repression of peaceful critics remains the order of the day in the UAE,” said Joey Shea, United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This decision reveals the travesty of the UAE’s justice system when it comes to political dissent.”
In December 2023, while hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Emirati authorities brought charges against at least 84 defendants in retaliation for forming an independent advocacy group in 2010. Many of them had already been serving prison sentences for the same or similar offenses. The unfair mass trial was marred by serious due process and fair trial violations, including restricted access to case material and information, limited legal assistance, judges directing witness testimony, violations of the principle of double jeopardy, credible allegations of serious abuse and ill-treatment, and hearings shrouded in secrecy.
In July 2024, the court sentenced 43 defendants to life in prison, 5 to 15 years, 5 to 10 years, and dismissed the criminal cases against 24 others. The public prosecutor appealed the cases dismissed, and the court will consider this appeal on April 8.
In addition to defendants from an earlier unfair mass trial, prominent activists such as Ahmed Mansoor, who is on the Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa advisory board, and an academic, Nasser bin Ghaith, were put on trial in the new case.
Given that the charges are based solely on defendants’ peaceful practice of their human rights and that the convictions were based on a fundamentally unfair trial, Emirati authorities should immediately overturn the convictions and release all defendants, Human Rights Watch said.
On March 1, the UAE’s state news agency announced that the State Security Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court would issue the appeals verdict on March 4. The March 4 session was the first and only hearing for the appeal. None of the detainees were present, and only one of the defendants’ lawyers was able to attend the session, according to the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center (EDAC), a human rights organization supporting imprisoned human rights defenders in the UAE.
Emirati authorities blocked at least one other lawyer from attending the session and said he would be provided with the results of the appeal within two days, the defendant’s family member said.
Article 245 of the UAE’s Criminal Procedures Law allows appeals within 30 days. But the family said that 30 days after the verdict, the authorities still had not granted the defendant’s lawyer access to the case file.
More than 30 days after the July verdict, Emirati authorities called the lawyer to the office of the public prosecutor and allowed him to view the case files once on a computer, the defendant’s relative said. The lawyer was not provided with a physical or electronic copy of the documents that could be accessed outside of the prosecutor’s office and was only able to take notes.
Little is known about the conditions for the 53 defendants because most are denied visits and calls from family members, EDAC said. “From what we have heard, they have been moved out of solitary, but everything is unconfirmed because there is no real source of information,” one relative said. “There is no real way to get information. We think this is just a sham trial.”
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 punishments of up to life in prison and even death for anyone who sets up, organizes, or runs such an organization.
At least 60 of the defendants had already been convicted in 2013 for their involvement with the Justice and Dignity Committee, EDAC said. In 2013, the grossly unfair “UAE94” trial resulted in convictions of 69 critics of the government, including 8 in absentia, on charges that violated their rights to free expression, association, and assembly. The 69 were among 94 people detained beginning in March 2012 in a wave of arbitrary arrests amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.
“Emirati authorities should overturn these convictions and release the defendants immediately and unconditionally,” Shea said.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/03/04/uae-unfair-mass-trial-convictions-upheld