UN experts blast UAE over arrest of award-winning rights campaigner

UN experts have warned that the United Arab Emirates' arrest of Ahmed Mansoor, an award-winning rights campaigner, has violated international law.

The UN working groups on arbitrary detention and on enforced disappearances in a statement on Tuesday disputed that there were any legitimate grounds for the detention.

"We regard Mr. Mansoor's arrest and detention as a direct attack on the legitimate work of human rights defenders in the UAE," the statement read.

The groups which include the UN's top experts on human rights defenders, freedom of expression, and freedom of peaceful assembly and association, also warned that his arrest on March 20 and detention in an unknown location since then "may constitute an act of reprisal" for his work with UN human rights bodies and supporter of rights organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The experts also cautioned that "the fact that Mr. Mansoor is being held in an unknown location puts him at serious risk of ill-treatment and torture."

"The lack of an arrest warrant or any judicial oversight of his arrest and detention represents a breach of fundamental principles of due process under international human rights law," they said.

The experts, who demanded his immediate release, also called on the UAE authorities to halt all "harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders" and to respect the right to freedom of expression.

Amnesty International and several other international rights groups have already slammed Mansoor’s arrest.

According to the official WAM news agency, UAE authorities ordered the arrest of Mansoor just over a week ago, accusing him of using social media platforms to "sow sedition, sectarianism and hatred."

Read more:

• UAE arrests prominent human rights activist

Mansoor won in 2015 the Martin Ennals award, named after the former secretary general of Amnesty International.

The award that is often dubbed the Nobel Prize for human rights is given to human rights defenders who show deep commitment to their cause despite huge personal risk.

Mansoor, a 47-year-old father of four, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2011 in a trial criticized by rights groups as “grossly unfair.”

At the time, he stood accused, along with four others, of using the internet to insult the UAE's leaders, of calling for a boycott of elections and of being linked to anti-government demonstrations.

He was pardoned by the UAE’s president later the same year, but was stripped of his passport and barred from overseas travel.

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