Today, the Federal Supreme Court of the United Arab Emirates, acting as the “State Security Court,” sentenced five bloggers to prison time. Pioneering Emirati blogger Ahmed Mansour received the harshest sentence, three years. The other four received sentences of two years each.
Mansoor was charged in April with a very popular “crime” among the tyrannies that crack down on difference of opinion: “insult.” In this case, insulting the U.A.E.’s leadership; specifically, the Vice President of Abu Dhabi.
Mansoor is a prominent blogger in the Arab World. He is also a communications engineer and published poet. One of his publishers was the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage. Mansoor was the creator and administrator of the Web forum “Hiwar” (which means Dialogue in Arabic), which the court ordered shut down. His fellow defendants were active on the site.
Others sentenced, according to Agence France Presse, were Nasser bin Gaith, a lecturer at the Abu Dhabi branch of the Sorbonne University, activists Fahid Salim Dalk, Hassan Ali Khamis and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq. They were also convicted with insulting the country’s leadership, as well as “calling for a boycott of September’s Federal National Council elections and… anti-government demonstrations.”
The trial took five months, according to Reuters.
International human rights groups condemned the kangaroo court. Among other things, the “crime” of insult is not recognized as such by most countries. The sentences are clearly disproportionate (precedent for the law they were convicted under treated the crimes as misdemeanours) and used by a frightened oligarchy who fear their loss of privilege, despite the country being only lightly touched by the Arab Spring that has swept through the region.
Supporters have taken to Twitter to register their opinions on the “U.A.E. 5,” as they are called, with the hashtag #uae5.
Other sources: TNW
