Reports of Systematic Torture in UAE Prisons

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Jul 6, 2013 UAE
[Alkaram logo. Image from alkarama.org] [Alkaram logo. Image from alkarama.org]

Reports of Systematic Torture in UAE Prisons

By : Jadaliyya Reports
[The following statement was issued by Alkarama on 27 June 2013.]
 

Smuggled Notes Detail Serios Aburse in Detention

(Beirut, June 26 2013) -- United Arab Emirates state security officers have subjected detainees to systematic mistreatment, including torture, say hand-written letters from detainees smuggled out of jails, Alkarama, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. The groups obtained 22 statements written by some of the 94people on trial for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government. The mistreatment described in the letters is consistent with other allegations of torture at UAE state security facilities, and indicates that torture is a systematic practice at these facilities.

The statements describe conditions in pre-trial detention in varying levels of detail. Several detainees describe mistreatment that clearly meets the definition of torture as outlined in article 1 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the UAE ratified in July 2012.

"I was beaten with a plastic tube all over my body," one detainee said. "I was tied to a chair and threatened with electrocution if I didn`t talk. I was insulted and humiliated."

"The UAE`s judicial system will lose all credibility if these allegations are swept under the carpet while the government`s critics are put behind bars," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Unless the government investigates and takes action, it will be hard to avoid concluding that torture is routine practice in the UAE."

On March 4, 2013, at the first trial hearing, some defendants told the judge they had been seriously ill-treated during months in detention. They described prolonged solitary confinement, exposure to continuous fluorescent lighting that made it difficult to sleep, inadequate heating, and hooding when they were taken from their cells -- including while being taken to the toilet or for interrogation. They said they had been repeatedly insulted by prison guards. People present in the court said that the judge ordered that the detainees undergo medical examinations, but these did not take place. The letters obtained by the rights groups indicate that these forms of mistreatment were systematic. All of the detainees who described their conditions said they were held in solitary confinement where they were constantly exposed to bright light in their cells.

All but six said they were subjected to extremes of temperature and that men who claimed to be state security officials interrogated the detainees while they were blindfolded. Two described being threatened with electrocution.

"I heard muffled sounds and screams, suggesting systematic torture, knocking on the iron doors to prevent me from sleeping, and very loud noises from the AC hatch, like airplane engines," another detainee said.

The allegations in the letters are consistent with previous allegations of torture. Amnesty International documented credible claims of torture in 2003 and raised concerns over the treatment of a UAE national in 2007, along with a US-Lebanese national in 2009. In September 2012, a Syrian national, Abdulelah al-Jadani, told Human Rights Watch that officers at a state security facility beat and whipped him, held him in painful stress positions, and hung him from the wall by his arms and legs. He also said he was subjected to severe sleep deprivation and extreme cold in his cell.

At the time Al-Jadani`s allegations emerged the whereabouts of the Emirati political detainees were unknown, and local sources told the organizations that it was likely they were being held in the same state security facility where al-Jadani alleges he was tortured. On September 6, six of the 94 detainees appeared before a judge at the Supreme Court. The son of one of the detainees was in the courtroom and reported that they seemed dishevelled, disoriented, and distressed.

Other detainees have also alleged that they have been tortured. One is Saud Kulaib, who is being held in Al Sader jail, but spent five months in incommunicado detention between December 29 and May 27. It is not clear what charges Kulaib is facing. Since his move to Al Sader, Kulaib has told family members and other inmates that he spent all of that time in solitary confinement, and that he was subjected to extremes of temperature and sleep deprivation.

He also alleges that officers beat him, sliced his hand open with a razor blade, threatened to pull out his fingernails, and told him that his wife was in detention and on hunger strike:

I was suspended several times from the legs, by an iron rod, in an extremely painful position, between two chairs while my hands were tied with an iron chain, leaving marks that are still visible today. I was then severely beaten on the legs for more than half an hour. Next cold water was poured over my head and body. At times my clothes were taken off, leaving only my under-shorts, to torture me in the manner already described.

In September Alkarama and Human Rights Watch documented the enforced disappearance of al-Suweidi for a period of six months. Local activists believe that a forced confession from al-Suweidi forms the basis of the prosecution`s case in the trial. On March 4, during the first session of the trial, al-Suweidi, told the judges: "I know that what I`m going to say may cost my life, but I deny the charges and I ask the court to protect my life and the life of my family," witnesses who were in the courtroom said.

"Not investigating such serious allegations of torture would add to the litany of the violation of the 94 defendants` rights, from the vague the charges brought against them for their association with al-Islah, or the Reform and Social Guidance Association, to their rights of defence being repeatedly flouted," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of Amnesty International`s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

Another group of 30 people accused of operating a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood have also alleged that they were tortured. On June 19 UAE authorities referred them for trial at the Federal Supreme Court. The authorities have not released their names, although local sources believe they include 13 Egyptians detained between November 21 and January 7. The son of one of the detainees, Dr Ali Sonbul, told Human Rights Watch that family members of the detainees who have visited the men in prison told him that they are being kept in solitary confinement and have been subjected to "psychological and physical torture."

To mark the International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture on June 26, Human Rights Watch, Alkarama and Amnesty International call on UAE authorities to:

  • Provide independent forensic medical examinations to defendants who say they have been tortured;
  • Exclude any evidence obtained by torture from any trial proceedings;
  • Ensure prompt, independent, and impartial investigations into allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, and other serious human rights violations and bring those responsible to justice in proceedings that comply with international fair trial standards; and
  • Ensure that victims of torture, enforced disappearance, and arbitrary detention receive full reparations.
  • Provide for the independent inspection of all detention centers.
  • Ratify the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

On June 7, the foreign minister, Dr. Anwar Gargash, told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that any allegation of torture in the UAE would be "dealt with in accordance with the laws of our country and the measures provided by the law will be taken in case of violation."

"To prove his intentions to the international community, Dr. Gargash should order investigations into all allegations of torture and mistreatment committed by the state security services, including those made by the UAE 94," said Rachid Mesli, director of Alkarama`s legal department.

Contact: Noemie Crottaz (English, French) in Geneva at +41796 856381
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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