Fully Authoritarian
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Population
HRF classifies the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The UAE is a federation of seven largely autonomous emirates each ruled by a hereditary royal family. The rulers of the seven emirates form the Federal Supreme Council (FSC), the executive body of the federal government that is led by the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who has served as the country’s president since 2022, and the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who has served as the vice president and prime minister since 2006. The regime, widely condemned for its transnational human rights abuses such as its sponsorship of the RSF militias in Sudan, uses the wealth that it generates from the country’s vast fossil fuel resources to maintain strict domestic control and launder its international image while restricting all forms of political expression and systematically repressing dissent.
There is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in the UAE, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. The regime does allow an electoral college of citizens handpicked by the rulers to run and vote in elections for 20 out of 40 seats of the Federal National Council (FNC), a consultative body with a limited mandate to discuss and approve legislation proposed by the appointed cabinet. However, the rulers ban political parties, marginalize the FNC’s role in governance, and target all forms of organized political opposition. Furthermore, the regime withholds all political rights from foreign residents, who make up close to 90% of the country’s population.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Vague terrorism, security, cybercrime, and press and publication laws enable regime-controlled institutions such as the State Security Apparatus (SSA) and National Media Council (NMC) to surveil and control the public sphere, retaliate against critics, and intimidate residents into self-censorship. Known dissidents, such as prisoners of conscience detained since the country’s largest mass trial in 2013, known as the UAE94, have faced arbitrary detention, torture, lifetime travel bans, and, as of November 2025, renewed trials and sentences on politically-motivated terrorism charges.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. As an absolute monarchy, the rulers of the emirates maintain executive and legislative authority, in addition to appointment powers for all levels of the judicial system. Courts routinely rubber-stamp politically-motivated charges brought against critics of the regime, most notably those brought by the SSA under vague counterterrorism and cybercrime laws. The judiciary fails to hold SSA and other regime officials accountable for human rights abuses such as arbitrary and secretive detention, enforced disappearance, and torture, allowing the regime to repress citizens and residents with impunity.
There is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in the UAE, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. While the regime hand-selects a limited number of citizens to vote in limited elections for its advisory council, it deprives most citizens and all non-citizen residents of political rights.
The Federal Supreme Council, comprised of the rulers of each of the seven emirates, holds absolute legislative and executive power in the country. The ruler of Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate with 96% of the country’s oil reserves, serves as the president and appoints the prime minister, traditionally from the ruling family of Dubai, the second largest emirate and financial capital, as well as a cabinet of 36 ministers and 20 members of the Federal National Council (FNC). The FNC is an advisory body with a limited mandate to discuss and approve draft laws that has had varied levels of influence since its inception at the founding of the UAE in 1971.
The regime systematically and unfairly bars parties and candidates from competing in the country’s limited elections. The regime enforces a total ban on political parties and political organizations, and has targeted affiliates of opposition political movements such as the formerly influential Al-Islah, or The Reform, movement. Limited elections take place every four years for half of the seats in the FNC. In an opaque process that is entirely controlled by the regime to ensure its control over deliberations in the body, the rulers of each emirate handpick candidates and an electoral college of citizens who are able to vote for 20 seats in the FNC. In 2011, the regime selected 129,000 voters, or 12% of eligible Emirati nationals, to participate in the elections, which increased to around 30% in 2019, with 337,738 eligible voters, and around 37% with 398,879 eligible voters in the 2023 elections.
In the UAE, independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. The regime abuses its control over the coercive SSA and ability to promulgate punitive laws to prosecute dissenters as terrorists or threats to national security, and often charges prominent dissidents in orchestrated mass trials. The regime also abuses these powers to censor the traditional and social media landscapes in the country and to disrupt politically sensitive journalistic and civil society activity. People who speak out against the regime or participate in public demonstrations in the UAE face legal harassment, arbitrary detention, and, at times, torture.
The regime systematically and seriously intimidates and obstructs the work of dissenting actors. Following popular calls for political reform that spread across the country in 2011, the regime has widely abused vague laws such as the 2003 Law Concerning the State Security Apparatus, the 2014 Law On Combating Terrorism Crimes, the 2021 Federal Crime and Punishment Law, and the 2022 Cybercrime Law to crack down on all forms of political dissent. The primary institution responsible for retaliating against criticism of the regime is the SSA, the country’s highest security body controlled directly by the president. Since the passing of a secretive law in 2003 that has never been made public, the SSA has held broad powers to surveil, arbitrarily detain, disappear, torture, and otherwise act without any institutional, judicial, or financial oversight. In a prominent case from 2013, the SSA charged 94 members of civil society in a mass trial, known as the UAE94, on spurious charges under the penal code for participating in a terrorist organization. Courts sentenced 69 of the defendants to seven to 15 years in prison and a travel ban. Shortly thereafter, the regime granted the SSA jurisdiction over terrorism and national security cases with the 2014 counterterrorism law, expanding its repressive capacities and ultimately granting pretext to try at least 60 of the UAE94 defendants alongside other democracy advocates under renewed terrorism charges in January 2024 as part of the country’s second-largest mass trial known as the UAE84. As a result, regime-controlled courts sentenced prominent human rights defenders and human rights advocates Ahmed Mansoor and Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith to 15 years in prison. The courts have also sentenced 67 other defendants, many of whom are held in incommunicado detention, to life in prison, and denied all appeals in the case.
The regime heavily manipulates media coverage in its favor and seriously and unfairly censors dissenting speech. The regime and its affiliates own every news outlet in the country and heavily regulate all media and online content. Since the promulgation of the New Media Law Federal Decree No. 55 in 2023, the National Media Council (NMC) licenses, surveils, and otherwise controls both traditional media and social media activities, including requiring social media influencers to obtain a license. The NMC also enforces the 2022 Cybercrimes Law, imposing heavy fines to influence outlets and social media users it does not directly control that range from 300,000 to 10 million dirhams (approximately $80,000 to $2.7 million) for storing, sharing, or publishing online content with defamation, “false news,” “incitement to immorality,” “offenses against the UAE and public order,” “contempt of religion,” or other content deemed illegal. In a prominent 2022 case, the regime permanently shut down Al Roeya News, an outlet in Abu Dhabi owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a brother of President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, after editors commissioned an article featuring complaints from UAE residents about high fuel prices in the country.
The regime takes measures to influence, surveil, and shut down civil society organizations (CSOs). In 2012, the regime shut down the offices of international organizations advocating for reforms and greater freedom of expression, such as the National Democratic Institute, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, RAND Corporation, and Gallup Center. The regime cracked down further on the freedom to associate with Federal Law Decree No. 7 in 2016, which imposes life imprisonment or the death penalty for establishing civil society organizations aimed at “overthrowing the government system,” “contravening the basic principles on which the state’s system of government is based,” or “whose activity is likely to undermine the security or interests of the state,” and Federal Law Decree No. 12 of 2017, which criminalizes CSO interference in politics and incitement to “hatred, sectarian, racial, religious or ethnic conflicts or any issues related to the security of the State and its regime.” In 2022, just 283 apolitical NGOs were reportedly allowed to operate in the UAE, with mandates to “promote benevolence, solidarity, and cooperation among members of the community.”
The regime seriously and unfairly represses dissenting protests. The penal code, amended to expand restrictions on assembly in 2022, bans political demonstrations and requires permits for public meetings. Security forces disperse all unlicensed gatherings, which typically arise among foreign residents protesting unfair labor practices. In 2024, the regime arbitrarily detained and convicted 57 residents from Bangladesh for their participation in peaceful solidarity gatherings with student protests in Bangladesh that ousted the then-prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, from over 20 years of authoritarian rule. Courts sentenced the defendants to ten years to life in prison and subsequent deportation just 24 hours after the protests took place. Although the regime pardoned the demonstrators two months later, human rights organizations have drawn attention to the extreme response to the mere existence of a public demonstration. In 2023, the regime did permit exceptional protests while hosting COP28 in December; however, it limited participation to a few hundred protesters and enforced strict censorship of their political messaging, specifically banning the use of Palestinian flags and slogans expressing solidarity with Palestinian victims of the Israel-Hamas war, in addition to the regime’s systematic targeting of advocates expressing peaceful dissent against its normalization of ties with Israel since 2020. While foreigners make up a super majority of residents and drive the economy, they have few political rights and face overt retaliation for speaking out against the regime or unfair labor practices. Likewise, the regime has narrowed formal space for Emirati citizens to organize or express any form of political opposition to its policies, especially targeting those affiliated with the formerly influential Al-Islah, or The Reform, movement.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The rulers of the seven emirates who comprise the regime hold executive and legislative authority and rule the country as absolute monarchs. The regime abuses its control over the judicial branch and security apparatus to coerce judges into ruling in its favor and preventing challenges to its hegemony by rubber-stamping charges against opponents.
The regime has systematically undermined institutional independence to the point where cases or issues challenging the governing authority are no longer brought or are frequently dismissed. The FSC, consisting of the dynastic rulers of each of the seven emirates, holds absolute executive and legislative power at the federal level and maintains absolute authority over all responsibilities not granted to the national government in their respective emirates. Despite such absolute control over institutions, the regime has taken measures to diminish the influence of the already limited FNC in response to popular demonstrations calling for reform that spread across the country in 2011, which are often considered part of the regional Arab Spring. Government ministers are increasingly absent from FNC sessions, signaling that the regime pays no mind to the deliberations or commentary of its members. The regime has bypassed the advisory role of the FNC, also in part due to the rise in political capital of non-citizen residents who comprise approximately 88.5% of the population. The FSC also makes all judicial and prosecutorial appointments across the federal and local courts. As a result, the prosecutor general’s office, which typically brings cases to the courts, and all members of the three levels of courts – the Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeal, and the Federal Supreme Court – are accountable solely to the regime. The regime maintains further coercive leverage over the judiciary branch through the SSA, which investigates and grants security clearances during the hiring and promotion of judges.
Amid a total lack of judicial independence, judges who rule contrary to regime interests or who are perceived as a threat to the regime frequently have faced regime retaliation. In 2014, SSA agents arrested Aisha Ibrahim Al-Zaabi, the wife of the former judge and member of the Public Prosecution Office, Muhammad Saqr Al-Zaabi, who was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison as a defendant in the UAE94 case by the Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi and later added to the state terror list in 2021 while in exile in the United Kingdom. SSA agents also arrested Al-Zaabi’s daughter at a border crossing point with Oman, held her in secret solitary confinement for five days without contact with a lawyer or her family, and released her after confiscating her money, phone, and identity documents.
Thus, in practice, the judiciary in the UAE functions as a façade of an independent justice system with the goal of legitimizing the regime’s decisions and fails to check the regime in a way that allows it to repress criticism and retaliate against those who express open opposition to its policies with impunity. The courts regularly rubber-stamp spurious SSA charges brought against regime critics and fail to hold officials accountable for the abuse of defendants with enforced disappearance, torture, and arbitrary detention. In July 2024, the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court sentenced Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith, an academic and human rights defender who rose to prominence in 2011, along with 40 other defendants, to life imprisonment on politically-motivated charges of “establishing and managing a clandestine terrorist organization” as part of the UAE84 mass trial. Courts previously sentenced Dr. bin Ghaith to two years in prison in 2011 on defamation charges for calling on the regime to make political reforms and another ten years in prison in 2017 on charges of “committing a hostile act against a foreign state” and “posting false information” in social media posts that included scholarly critique of the Egyptian regime and an opinion on his own legal proceedings. In another case, the State Security Chamber of the Federal Appeals Court sentenced Ahmed Mansoor, one of the country’s most prominent human rights defenders who served as an advisory member to the Gulf Center for Human Rights and to Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, to ten years imprisonment in May 2018 on trumped-up charges of insulting Emirati leaders and using social media “to publish false information and rumors” that “harm national unity and social harmony and damage the country’s reputation.” While serving his sentence, Mansoor was brought to trial on new terrorism charges as part of the UAE84 and sentenced to a further fifteen years in prison amid continued reports of mistreatment and torture. An appeals court upheld his sentence in March 2025.
HRF classifies the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The UAE is a federation of seven largely autonomous emirates each ruled by a hereditary royal family. The rulers of the seven emirates form the Federal Supreme Council (FSC), the executive body of the federal government that is led by the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who has served as the country’s president since 2022, and the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who has served as the vice president and prime minister since 2006. The regime, widely condemned for its transnational human rights abuses such as its sponsorship of the RSF militias in Sudan, uses the wealth that it generates from the country’s vast fossil fuel resources to maintain strict domestic control and launder its international image while restricting all forms of political expression and systematically repressing dissent.
There is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in the UAE, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. The regime does allow an electoral college of citizens handpicked by the rulers to run and vote in elections for 20 out of 40 seats of the Federal National Council (FNC), a consultative body with a limited mandate to discuss and approve legislation proposed by the appointed cabinet. However, the rulers ban political parties, marginalize the FNC’s role in governance, and target all forms of organized political opposition. Furthermore, the regime withholds all political rights from foreign residents, who make up close to 90% of the country’s population.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Vague terrorism, security, cybercrime, and press and publication laws enable regime-controlled institutions such as the State Security Apparatus (SSA) and National Media Council (NMC) to surveil and control the public sphere, retaliate against critics, and intimidate residents into self-censorship. Known dissidents, such as prisoners of conscience detained since the country’s largest mass trial in 2013, known as the UAE94, have faced arbitrary detention, torture, lifetime travel bans, and, as of November 2025, renewed trials and sentences on politically-motivated terrorism charges.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. As an absolute monarchy, the rulers of the emirates maintain executive and legislative authority, in addition to appointment powers for all levels of the judicial system. Courts routinely rubber-stamp politically-motivated charges brought against critics of the regime, most notably those brought by the SSA under vague counterterrorism and cybercrime laws. The judiciary fails to hold SSA and other regime officials accountable for human rights abuses such as arbitrary and secretive detention, enforced disappearance, and torture, allowing the regime to repress citizens and residents with impunity.
There is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in the UAE, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. While the regime hand-selects a limited number of citizens to vote in limited elections for its advisory council, it deprives most citizens and all non-citizen residents of political rights.
The Federal Supreme Council, comprised of the rulers of each of the seven emirates, holds absolute legislative and executive power in the country. The ruler of Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate with 96% of the country’s oil reserves, serves as the president and appoints the prime minister, traditionally from the ruling family of Dubai, the second largest emirate and financial capital, as well as a cabinet of 36 ministers and 20 members of the Federal National Council (FNC). The FNC is an advisory body with a limited mandate to discuss and approve draft laws that has had varied levels of influence since its inception at the founding of the UAE in 1971.
The regime systematically and unfairly bars parties and candidates from competing in the country’s limited elections. The regime enforces a total ban on political parties and political organizations, and has targeted affiliates of opposition political movements such as the formerly influential Al-Islah, or The Reform, movement. Limited elections take place every four years for half of the seats in the FNC. In an opaque process that is entirely controlled by the regime to ensure its control over deliberations in the body, the rulers of each emirate handpick candidates and an electoral college of citizens who are able to vote for 20 seats in the FNC. In 2011, the regime selected 129,000 voters, or 12% of eligible Emirati nationals, to participate in the elections, which increased to around 30% in 2019, with 337,738 eligible voters, and around 37% with 398,879 eligible voters in the 2023 elections.
In the UAE, independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. The regime abuses its control over the coercive SSA and ability to promulgate punitive laws to prosecute dissenters as terrorists or threats to national security, and often charges prominent dissidents in orchestrated mass trials. The regime also abuses these powers to censor the traditional and social media landscapes in the country and to disrupt politically sensitive journalistic and civil society activity. People who speak out against the regime or participate in public demonstrations in the UAE face legal harassment, arbitrary detention, and, at times, torture.
The regime systematically and seriously intimidates and obstructs the work of dissenting actors. Following popular calls for political reform that spread across the country in 2011, the regime has widely abused vague laws such as the 2003 Law Concerning the State Security Apparatus, the 2014 Law On Combating Terrorism Crimes, the 2021 Federal Crime and Punishment Law, and the 2022 Cybercrime Law to crack down on all forms of political dissent. The primary institution responsible for retaliating against criticism of the regime is the SSA, the country’s highest security body controlled directly by the president. Since the passing of a secretive law in 2003 that has never been made public, the SSA has held broad powers to surveil, arbitrarily detain, disappear, torture, and otherwise act without any institutional, judicial, or financial oversight. In a prominent case from 2013, the SSA charged 94 members of civil society in a mass trial, known as the UAE94, on spurious charges under the penal code for participating in a terrorist organization. Courts sentenced 69 of the defendants to seven to 15 years in prison and a travel ban. Shortly thereafter, the regime granted the SSA jurisdiction over terrorism and national security cases with the 2014 counterterrorism law, expanding its repressive capacities and ultimately granting pretext to try at least 60 of the UAE94 defendants alongside other democracy advocates under renewed terrorism charges in January 2024 as part of the country’s second-largest mass trial known as the UAE84. As a result, regime-controlled courts sentenced prominent human rights defenders and human rights advocates Ahmed Mansoor and Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith to 15 years in prison. The courts have also sentenced 67 other defendants, many of whom are held in incommunicado detention, to life in prison, and denied all appeals in the case.
The regime heavily manipulates media coverage in its favor and seriously and unfairly censors dissenting speech. The regime and its affiliates own every news outlet in the country and heavily regulate all media and online content. Since the promulgation of the New Media Law Federal Decree No. 55 in 2023, the National Media Council (NMC) licenses, surveils, and otherwise controls both traditional media and social media activities, including requiring social media influencers to obtain a license. The NMC also enforces the 2022 Cybercrimes Law, imposing heavy fines to influence outlets and social media users it does not directly control that range from 300,000 to 10 million dirhams (approximately $80,000 to $2.7 million) for storing, sharing, or publishing online content with defamation, “false news,” “incitement to immorality,” “offenses against the UAE and public order,” “contempt of religion,” or other content deemed illegal. In a prominent 2022 case, the regime permanently shut down Al Roeya News, an outlet in Abu Dhabi owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a brother of President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, after editors commissioned an article featuring complaints from UAE residents about high fuel prices in the country.
The regime takes measures to influence, surveil, and shut down civil society organizations (CSOs). In 2012, the regime shut down the offices of international organizations advocating for reforms and greater freedom of expression, such as the National Democratic Institute, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, RAND Corporation, and Gallup Center. The regime cracked down further on the freedom to associate with Federal Law Decree No. 7 in 2016, which imposes life imprisonment or the death penalty for establishing civil society organizations aimed at “overthrowing the government system,” “contravening the basic principles on which the state’s system of government is based,” or “whose activity is likely to undermine the security or interests of the state,” and Federal Law Decree No. 12 of 2017, which criminalizes CSO interference in politics and incitement to “hatred, sectarian, racial, religious or ethnic conflicts or any issues related to the security of the State and its regime.” In 2022, just 283 apolitical NGOs were reportedly allowed to operate in the UAE, with mandates to “promote benevolence, solidarity, and cooperation among members of the community.”
The regime seriously and unfairly represses dissenting protests. The penal code, amended to expand restrictions on assembly in 2022, bans political demonstrations and requires permits for public meetings. Security forces disperse all unlicensed gatherings, which typically arise among foreign residents protesting unfair labor practices. In 2024, the regime arbitrarily detained and convicted 57 residents from Bangladesh for their participation in peaceful solidarity gatherings with student protests in Bangladesh that ousted the then-prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, from over 20 years of authoritarian rule. Courts sentenced the defendants to ten years to life in prison and subsequent deportation just 24 hours after the protests took place. Although the regime pardoned the demonstrators two months later, human rights organizations have drawn attention to the extreme response to the mere existence of a public demonstration. In 2023, the regime did permit exceptional protests while hosting COP28 in December; however, it limited participation to a few hundred protesters and enforced strict censorship of their political messaging, specifically banning the use of Palestinian flags and slogans expressing solidarity with Palestinian victims of the Israel-Hamas war, in addition to the regime’s systematic targeting of advocates expressing peaceful dissent against its normalization of ties with Israel since 2020. While foreigners make up a super majority of residents and drive the economy, they have few political rights and face overt retaliation for speaking out against the regime or unfair labor practices. Likewise, the regime has narrowed formal space for Emirati citizens to organize or express any form of political opposition to its policies, especially targeting those affiliated with the formerly influential Al-Islah, or The Reform, movement.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The rulers of the seven emirates who comprise the regime hold executive and legislative authority and rule the country as absolute monarchs. The regime abuses its control over the judicial branch and security apparatus to coerce judges into ruling in its favor and preventing challenges to its hegemony by rubber-stamping charges against opponents.
The regime has systematically undermined institutional independence to the point where cases or issues challenging the governing authority are no longer brought or are frequently dismissed. The FSC, consisting of the dynastic rulers of each of the seven emirates, holds absolute executive and legislative power at the federal level and maintains absolute authority over all responsibilities not granted to the national government in their respective emirates. Despite such absolute control over institutions, the regime has taken measures to diminish the influence of the already limited FNC in response to popular demonstrations calling for reform that spread across the country in 2011, which are often considered part of the regional Arab Spring. Government ministers are increasingly absent from FNC sessions, signaling that the regime pays no mind to the deliberations or commentary of its members. The regime has bypassed the advisory role of the FNC, also in part due to the rise in political capital of non-citizen residents who comprise approximately 88.5% of the population. The FSC also makes all judicial and prosecutorial appointments across the federal and local courts. As a result, the prosecutor general’s office, which typically brings cases to the courts, and all members of the three levels of courts – the Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeal, and the Federal Supreme Court – are accountable solely to the regime. The regime maintains further coercive leverage over the judiciary branch through the SSA, which investigates and grants security clearances during the hiring and promotion of judges.
Amid a total lack of judicial independence, judges who rule contrary to regime interests or who are perceived as a threat to the regime frequently have faced regime retaliation. In 2014, SSA agents arrested Aisha Ibrahim Al-Zaabi, the wife of the former judge and member of the Public Prosecution Office, Muhammad Saqr Al-Zaabi, who was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison as a defendant in the UAE94 case by the Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi and later added to the state terror list in 2021 while in exile in the United Kingdom. SSA agents also arrested Al-Zaabi’s daughter at a border crossing point with Oman, held her in secret solitary confinement for five days without contact with a lawyer or her family, and released her after confiscating her money, phone, and identity documents.
Thus, in practice, the judiciary in the UAE functions as a façade of an independent justice system with the goal of legitimizing the regime’s decisions and fails to check the regime in a way that allows it to repress criticism and retaliate against those who express open opposition to its policies with impunity. The courts regularly rubber-stamp spurious SSA charges brought against regime critics and fail to hold officials accountable for the abuse of defendants with enforced disappearance, torture, and arbitrary detention. In July 2024, the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeals Court sentenced Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith, an academic and human rights defender who rose to prominence in 2011, along with 40 other defendants, to life imprisonment on politically-motivated charges of “establishing and managing a clandestine terrorist organization” as part of the UAE84 mass trial. Courts previously sentenced Dr. bin Ghaith to two years in prison in 2011 on defamation charges for calling on the regime to make political reforms and another ten years in prison in 2017 on charges of “committing a hostile act against a foreign state” and “posting false information” in social media posts that included scholarly critique of the Egyptian regime and an opinion on his own legal proceedings. In another case, the State Security Chamber of the Federal Appeals Court sentenced Ahmed Mansoor, one of the country’s most prominent human rights defenders who served as an advisory member to the Gulf Center for Human Rights and to Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, to ten years imprisonment in May 2018 on trumped-up charges of insulting Emirati leaders and using social media “to publish false information and rumors” that “harm national unity and social harmony and damage the country’s reputation.” While serving his sentence, Mansoor was brought to trial on new terrorism charges as part of the UAE84 and sentenced to a further fifteen years in prison amid continued reports of mistreatment and torture. An appeals court upheld his sentence in March 2025.
