DUBAI (Middle East Eye) – United Arab Emirates (UAE) prison authorities retaliated against prominent activist Ahmed Mansoor after the publication of letters he wrote detailing his mistreatment in jail, two rights groups said on Friday.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Persian Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) say Mansoor has been denied access to critical medical care since the letters were first released on 16 July by London-based news outlet Arabi21.
Mansoor has also been transferred to a smaller and more isolated cell and his reading glasses have been confiscated, according to the report.
The human rights defender is serving a 10-year sentence on charges relating to his activism, including “insulting the status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols including its leaders”, and “seeking to damage the relationship of the UAE with its neighbors by publishing false reports and information on social media”.
The prison letters, dated November 2020, paint a grim image of Mansoor’s conditions in jail.
They reveal that he has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest in 2017, deprived of basic necessities and cut off from the outside world as well as fellow prisoners.
The activist’s phone privileges and visitation rights are severely restricted. Prison guards have stripped his cell bare, confiscating his clothes, mattress, blankets and towels - leaving Mansoor with one shirt whose sleeves had been ripped off.
“What’s worse, they cut off hot water from my cell during the extremely cold winter in the desert,” one of the letters read.
The cold, Mansoor wrote, led to various health issues, including hypertension and frequent fevers.
The UAE, which celebrated the “year of tolerance” in 2019, has been urged by other rights groups in the past to release a number of political prisoners who were jailed during the country’s infamous “UAE 94” trial.
The 2013 mass trial involved 94 people who were accused of trying to overthrow the Emirati government.