Trial Observation Report: The United Arab Emirates 94

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Mar 31, 2013 UAE
[Gulf Center for Human Rights logo] [Gulf Center for Human Rights logo]

Trial Observation Report: The United Arab Emirates 94

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following report was issued by the Gulf Center for Human Rights on 25 March 2013.] 

Trial Observation Report: "The United Arab Emirates 94" 

Executive Summary 

The first two hearings in the trial of ninety-four intellectuals, activists, and human rights defenders, took place before the Special Security Court within the Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) on 4 and 11 March 2013. A coalition of four human rights organisations - the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) - appointed observer Melanie Gingell, a barrister of England and Wales to monitor and report on the hearings. The coalition`s mission was supported by association with Al Karama, the International Commission of Jurists, a delegation of Turkish lawyers, and the British-based Emirates Centre for Human Rights, who were also tasked with observing the trial.

On 27 January 2013, the ninety-four defendants were charged with founding, organising and administering an organisation aimed at overthrowing the government, contrary to article 180 of the penal code. The offence carries a maximum sentence of fifteen-years` imprisonment. There is no right of appeal in matters heard in the Special Federal Security Court. The group of defendants is made up of ninety-four Emiratis. Thirteen of these defendants are women who are the only ones to have been granted bail. The arrests took place over the twelve months preceding the trial. Some of the ninety-four have not been arrested and have been described as absconders. Ten of those in custody have reportedly been held in secret detention centres and/or in solitary confinement and have suffered torture and inhumane treatment.

The Supreme Court security service prevented international legal observers from entering the court to monitor the proceedings. Members of the international media were also denied entry. Thus there was a breach of the obligation to hold the trial in public and for justice to be seen to be carried out.

The authorities presented the observers with procedures in order to gain access to the hearings, which they claimed were open to the public. They complied with all these procedures, which included providing copies of passports, passport photographs and documentation in Arabic - including requests to the presiding judge and the observers’ mandates in the first instance to the security services at the Supreme Court, and then to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The hearing was held under conditions of the highest security. All routes leading to the court were subject to police roadblocks. Observers who tried to approach the area on foot were stopped and their passports examined before being ejected from the area. There were signs that the hotel rooms of the observers were searched while the observers were following the required procedures.

Relatives of the defendants and local press were however allowed access to the court, albeit under strict conditions. The following report is therefore based on interviews with those relatives, and reports in the local press. Despite many requests made by representatives of the coalition to meet with a member of the prosecution team and the judges, and to visit the detention centres, these requests were all either denied or ignored. No reasons were given.

The coalition welcomes the fact that some aspects of the right to fair trial were respected. The defendants were present during the hearings and were represented by counsel. The defendants were allowed to intervene in the proceedings both in person and through their counsel.

The coalition believes however that other aspects of the right to a fair trial have been breached. In so far as the principle of the equality of arms between the prosecution and the defence, the independence and impartiality of the tribunal and the presumption of innocence are concerned, there are serious defects. In summary, the proximity of the prosecution and judge, the failure to provide the defence with the prosecution`s evidence in a timely manner, and the disparity of approach by the tribunal between the defence and the prosecution lawyers are all factors which lead us to conclude that the defendants have not been afforded a fair trial.

The coalition believes that there has been a serious breach of the obligation to prevent torture of the defendants while in pre-trial detention. We further believe that the court, having heard the allegations of torture, failed to order any investigation of the allegations or to address them in any way. The central piece of evidence against the defendants is the confession of one of them, Ahmed Bin Ghaith Al-Suwaidi. This defendant has spent the last year in solitary confinement at a secret location. The coalition believes that the confession was extracted from him by torture and should therefore be disregarded by the Court as evidence, according to international standards and in particular the UN Convention Against Torture. His appearance at court was distressing and shocking for his relatives: he could hardly stand and he had lost a great deal of weight. According to his relatives, “He seemed like a pale shadow of his former self.” Al-Suwaidi made an emotional plea to the judge calling for protection for himself and his family. He further said that security services had threatened to murder him and his family if he did not change his plea to guilty.

The coalition expresses deep concern that many of the defendants in custody have been detained in appalling circumstances at secret locations without access to lawyers or family for long periods of time. It is alleged that the defendants have suffered variously beatings, the lengthy holding of stress positions, electric shocks, and deprivation of sleep. The allegations include that they have in some cases been humiliated by the withholding of adequate food, clothing and warmth and have suffered sexual abuse.

The trial is not proceeding on consecutive days and is being heard at a rate of one or two days per week. It is not known how many further hearings will take place. The coalition is concerned that this protracted approach may give rise to a violation of the right to trial within a reasonable time or the right to be released.

The coalition calls upon the judge to mount an immediate investigation into the allegations of torture, and if the allegations are found to be true, to punish the perpetrators accordingly.

The report concludes that: 

  • The judge has failed in his duty to investigate credible allegations of torture of the defendants whilst in pre-trial detention.
  • The trial is proceeding in violation of internationally recognised standards of a fair trial.

[Click here to access the full report.] 
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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412