European Parliament calls for the release of Ahmed Mansoor and all other prisoners of conscience in the #UAE including Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith https://t.co/wJBuKyhrpz via @AlkaramaHR Demand the immediate release of Dr. bin Ghaith! https://t.co/YubJp3IkH8 #ScholarsinPrison
— Scholars At Risk (@ScholarsAtRisk) October 5, 2018
Human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor who has been detained since March 2017, is appealing his 10 year prison sentence, according to the Gulf Centre for Human Rights. As reported previously in the CIVICUS Monitor, Mansoor was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in May 2018, after a year of pre-trial detention, for using his twitter handle to call for the release of detained human rights defenders, and to expose human rights violations in Yemen and Egypt.
On 4th October 2018 the European Parliament issued a resolution condemning Mansoor's imprisonment and called upon the Emirati authorities to release him from Al Sadr prison. The resolution strongly condemned the harassment, persecution and detention of Ahmed Mansoor and expressed grave concern at reports that he had been subjected to torture and ill treatment. The resolution also expressed concern about the persecution of other human rights defenders in the UAE and called upon the UAE authorities to amend the 2012 Cybercrimes Law and other laws, the Counter-Terrorism Law, and Federal Law No 2/2008, which it said “are repeatedly used to prosecute human rights defenders and used to persecute human rights defenders.”