human rights defender
Ahmed Mansoor
Actions and Campaigns
human rights defender
Actions and Campaigns
Ahmed Mansoor's health has deteriorated significantly in prison, including his eyesight. He was diagnosed with hypertension later in 2018 and has not been given medication to treat it, putting him at increased risk for heart disease and stroke.
1969
Man
In prison (sentenced)
Ahmed Mansoor Ali Abdullah Al-Abd Al-Shehhi is an Emirati engineer and human rights defender. He is on the advisory boards of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) and was awarded the 2015 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. Since 2006, he focused on initiatives concerning freedom of expression, and civil and political rights. He regularly raised concerns on arbitrary detention, torture or ill or degrading treatment, failure to meet international standards for fair trials, non-independence of the judiciary, domestic laws that violate international law, and other violations of civil rights. He was one of the initiators of the 3 March 2011 petition that called for democratic reform in the UAE. Shortly afterwards, he was jailed with four others in connection with the online discussion forum UAEHewar.net, in what became widely known as the UAE5 case. He was accused of publicly insulting the UAE leadership and was sentenced to three years imprisonments, but released one day after the verdict on presidential pardon after spending nearly eight months in jail. He has been jailed since March 2017 for his human rights activism, including his posts criticising human rights violations on social media.
Mar 20, 2017
25 years
Latitude: 24.68021
Longitude: 54.66542
Abu Dhabi
Al-Sadr prison
On May 29, 2018, Ahmed Mansoor was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment and a fine of 1,000,000 Emirati Dirhams (around USD $270,000) based on charges related to damaging the country's reputation and spreading false information online. The court also ordered that he be placed under surveillance for three years after his release. On 31 December 2018, the UAE's State Security Court upheld the 10-year prison sentence. On 10 July 2024, the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court meted out sentences ranging from between 10 years to life in prison for 53 defendants in the UAE’s second largest unfair mass trial which is known as the UAE84 case. Ahmed Mansoor was sentenced in this trial to additional 15 years in prison on allegations of “cooperating with a terrorist organisation and supporting it in articles and tweets he published on social media, knowing its anti-state objectives.
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