WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- A U.S.-based rights group is urging the United Nations to investigate the 2019 death of an award-winning Emirati poet and writers’ union chief, citing disclosures in a newly published book that he was abducted from his home and tortured to death in custody.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said that Princes and Thieves, a book by Matthew Cole published last week, alleges that Habib al-Sayegh, 64, was kidnapped from his home in the United Arab Emirates and taken to a prison where interrogators pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and struck him repeatedly with a sharp metal object. 
The book says Sayegh, chairman of the Emirates Writers Union and secretary-general of the General Union of Arab Writers, was left to die between Aug. 16 and 19, 2019.
DAWN, founded by the late Middle East Eye columnist Jamal Khashoggi, said injuries of that kind would leave marks detectable in a forensic examination of the remains. “Only an independent investigation can answer” the many questions surrounding his fate, it said.
In a letter Thursday to three UN special rapporteurs, DAWN advocacy director Raed Jarrar asked them to press the UAE for Sayegh’s death certificate, the recorded cause of death, any detention records and its response to the book’s allegations, and to allow his family and an independent forensic expert to confirm the location and condition of his grave. 
The group also asked the rapporteurs to share findings with the Human Rights Council and seek accountability for any violations of international law.
Cole’s book claims Emirati officials held the body for more than a day and barred Sayegh’s family from viewing it, before later moving his remains from the Abu Dhabi cemetery where he was buried to an unmarked desert grave so his family could not pray there.
Sayegh, who received an honorary state award in 2012 for his contributions to national identity, was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Al Khaleej. 
In a column on Aug. 11, 2019, he described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” and asked: “Who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?” 
Nine days later, the state news agency announced his death without revealing the cause. Over a year later, the UAE officially normalized relations with Israel at a White House signing ceremony overseen by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Despite a documented pattern of disappearing dissidents, the UAE is a party to the Convention against Torture, Jarrar noted.