DUBAI (Middle East Eye) – A lawyer
representing a jailed Emirati human rights defender has filed a torture complaint against Interpol’s new president who is from the United Arab Emirates, during the police chief’s first visit to the agency’s headquarters in France.
William Bourdon, a lawyer for prominent rights activist Ahmed Mansoor, said he filed the complaint against Interpol President Ahmed Naser al-Raisi in a Paris court under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Mansoor is serving a 10-year sentence in the UAE on charges of “insulting the status and prestige of the UAE” and its leaders in social media posts.
According to letters released from his prison last year, the 53-year-old has been held in solitary confinement since 2017 and has had his cell stripped bare, with prison authorities confiscating his clothes, mattress, blankets and towels.
Amnesty International has described Mansoor as a prisoner of conscience.
In a statement, French MP Hubert Julien-Laferriere said Raisi’s “presence on French soil without him being worried - or at least auditioned - by the justice of our country would be a new affront to human rights and to the reputation of this international organization”, Tribune De Lyon reported.
Raisi was in November elected to a four-year term as Interpol’s president, and has since seen several torture complaints filed against him for involvement in torture and arbitrary detentions in the UAE.
In October, lawyers representing British nationals Matthew Hedges and Ali Issa Ahmad filed complaints against Raisi with the French prosecutor in Paris.
Hedges, a Durham University PhD student, was held for about six months in solitary confinement after being arrested at Dubai airport in May 2018 on suspicion of spying for the British security services.
He claimed that his calls were monitored, he was subjected to torture and was made to sign a false confession. He was eventually pardoned by UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
Ahmad, a British football fan, was imprisoned for reportedly wearing a Qatar shirt to a football match in 2019. He said he was tortured by the UAE’s security agencies.
During Interpol’s elections last year, a group of 19 human rights groups wrote a letter condemning the UAE’s “poor human rights record”, and said Raisi’s appointment would “damage Interpol’s reputation”.