Freed UAE Activists Vow to Press Reform Campaign
Abu Dhabi: Seven months in prison for signing an internet petition is not stopping five United Arab Emirates activists from pressing for reforms. Just after they were convicted, pardoned and released, they vowed to campaign for more freedom in the tightly ruled Gulf union, the Associated Press reports.
Ahmed Mansoor, Nasser bin Ghaith, Fahad Salim Dalk, Ahmed Abdul Khaleq, and Hassan al-Khamis were arrested in April and later charged with publicly insulting top officials, a crime under the U.A.E.'s penal code. All five activists were pardoned yesterday, a day after receiving jail sentences of up to three years.
"It's a mixed feeling to be out," bin Gaith told the AP after his release. "I am with my family, but our arrests mark the beginning of a police state in the UAE."
Though they were released on the strength of a presidential pardon, the five still maintain the status of convicted criminals, their defense lawyer said. Bin Gaith said that alongside the reform campaign, he will fight to clear their names.
The oil-rich U.A.E. has been largely untouched by the Arab Spring upheavals. But some of the charged activists had signed a petition urging greater powers for the U.A.E.'s semi-elected, quasi parliament. Others had written critically of the power of rulers in the federation of seven states. The case had been read as a gauge of how the Gulf state responds to political dissidence after Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere.
Ahmed Mansour a prominent blogger. and Nasser bin Gaith, an economics professor who has lectured at Paris’ Sorbonne university in Abu Dhabi, the two told that they spent days in solitary confinement in Abu Dhabi’s Al Wathba prison. The rest of the time they were held with convicted killers, terrorists, rapists, adulterous, drug dealers and pirates.
bin Gaith said he was repeatedly harassed by other prisoners and frequently put in solitary confinement, once even after he had demanded to see a doctor. He spent weeks shackled and handcuffed in his cell day and at night.
"Whenever they asked me what my crime was, I told them my case is not criminal, it's political," Mansour told the AP. "I was calm in jail because I knew I did not do anything to deserve a single day in prison." If the government's intention by arresting, convicting, sentencing and then releasing them was to intimidate the five, it appears to have failed.
He has often criticized Gulf rulers for rejecting all but the most limited of political reforms and for failing to provide a legal framework for the fast-paced economic development of the past decade. Just days before his arrest, he questioned the cash-for-stability remedies by Gulf rulers to blunt Arab Spring-inspired demands.
"It's beyond me why they arrested me or the other four," bin Gaith told the AP in an interview. "And why was I treated in such a way? Because I said the wind of change is blowing, and we need to do something?"
Mr. Mansoor, the main defendant accused of running an online forum where other defendants allegedly posted antigovernment views, faced up to nine years in prison and received a three-year sentence on Sunday. The other four defendants, including bin Gaith, facing up to five years in prison each, had been sentenced to two years each by a federal security court that normally tries terrorism suspects and has no recourse for appeal.
Mansour said he hopes their ordeal will inspire people to seek reforms in their country's political and legal system that remains a mix of Islamic laws and tribal rules.Mansour, 41, worked as an engineer for a communications company until he was taken into custody from his Dubai home in April. In addition to writing a blog,
Mansour also led an online forum that was popular with Emiratis who were unhappy with their country's fast-paced development at the expense of traditions."They did everything to make me a criminal, but I consider fighting for human rights and free speech as part of my patriotic duty," Mansour said.
"I have not committed any crime," bin Gaith said. "I only offered advice to make my country better. And that's what I will continue to do." For years, bin Gaith was part of the ruling elite's inner circle. The 42-year-old U.S.-educated economist and lawyer is a decorated UAE air force pilot and served as a legal adviser to the country's armed forces until he was detained.
