3 women risk torture in secret UAE detention over ‘I miss my brother’ tweet – Amnesty

Reuters / Omar Sobhani

Reuters / Omar Sobhani

Three women questioned and detained by UAE police in February are “at risk of torture or other ill-treatment,” Amnesty International says. The sisters tweeted in support of their brother, a prisoner of conscience.

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The women – Asma, Mariam, and Alyaziyah Khalifa al-Suwaidi –
disappeared after they were taken to a police station in Abu
Dhabi on February 15, the human rights watchdog said in a Friday
report. Prior to that, the three spoke out on social media to
draw attention to their brother’s unfair trial.

“Shortly after posting a tweet that said ‘I miss my brother,’
Asma Khalifa al-Suwaidi and her two sisters were summoned by
police and now have vanished as if into a black hole,”

Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa
Programme at Amnesty International, said in a press release.

The sisters’ mother received a brief phone call the day after her
daughters didn’t return home. A person claiming to be a state
security official said: “Your daughters are fine,” with
no further details. The sisters are believed to have no access to
a lawyer, or to their family.

Issa al-Suwaidi, the brother of the three women, is among 69
activists convicted in a ‘UAE 94’ trial after being held
in secret detention for an alleged attempt to overthrow the
government in 2013.

“The authorities must recognize that attempts to silence
critics and crush freedom of expression by resorting to deeply
repressive tactics will backfire. They cannot arbitrarily lock up
activists or their families indefinitely without charge, on a
whim,”
Luther said, adding that the detainees “must be
immediately and unconditionally released, like all others
detained solely for peaceful expression.”

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slams UAE as ‘deeply repressive state beneath facade of
glamour’

Amnesty International has documented several cases when relatives
of UAE 94 prisoners were “harassed, intimidated or arrested
after criticizing proceedings or publicizing allegations of
torture in detention on Twitter.”
They were then taken to
secret detention facilities to be held incommunicado for weeks or
months.

Last year, the NGO accused the United Arab Emirates of an
“unprecedented clampdown on dissent” in its report
titled ‘There is no freedom here: Silencing dissent in the
UAE.’
It revealed scores of unnoticed torture and human
rights abuses by authorities, veiled by the glamorous appearance
of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

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