Most of the defendants in the secretive trial which began during COP28 had already spent 11 years in jail

Vast majority were being tried for the second time in breach of fundamental legal principles 

‘The trial has been a shameless parody of justice’ - Devin Kenney

Responding to news that a court in the United Arab Emirates has convicted scores of defendants - sentencing 40 to life in prison - in a mass trial of 84 (known as the “UAE84” trial) after nearly all the defendants had already spent 11 years in prison as victims of a previous unfair mass trial, Devin Kenney, Amnesty International’s UAE Researcher, said:

“The UAE must urgently revoke this unlawful verdict and immediately release the defendants. 

“The trial has been a shameless parody of justice and violated multiple fundamental principles of law, including the principle that you cannot try the same person twice for the same crime and the principle that you cannot punish people retroactively under laws that didn’t exist at the time of the alleged offence. 

“Trying 84 Emiratis at once - including 26 prisoners of conscience and well-known human rights defenders - is a scarcely-disguised exercise in punishing dissenters that has been further marred by a myriad of fair trial violations, the most serious of which is uninvestigated allegations of torture and other ill-treatment.

“Defendants have been held in prolonged solitary confinement, deprived of contact with their families and lawyers, and subjected to sleep deprivation through continuous exposure to loud music. 

“The defendants and their families, including the families who have hired and are paying exorbitant legal fees for their defence lawyers, are forbidden from receiving the most basic court documents, and family members have repeatedly been denied entrance to the courtroom to observe trial sessions. 

“It is not just the verdict, but the whole case that makes a mockery of the rule of law.

“This case should be the final nail in the coffin of the UAE’s attempts to disguise its horrendous human rights abuses behind a progressive façade.”

‘UAE84’ trial

The Emirati authorities launched the new mass trial during COP28, charging 84 defendants with establishing a “terrorist organisation”, as well as supporting and funding this organisation. The case had been ongoing since 7 December, yet the UAE only acknowledged the trial was taking place a month after human rights groups and journalists first uncovered and reported it. The indictment, the charges, the defence lawyers and even the names of defendants have been kept secret by the UAE government and are known only partially through leaks. Of the known defendants, the vast majority (67 out of 72) had already been tried on the same accusations in the last mass trial in 2012-13. Nearly half (34 out of 72) are signatories of a pro-democracy petition from 2011 to which the UAE authorities have reacted with a series of repressive measures. 

Update: in the evening local time on 10 July, the UAE government news agency issued information on the trial saying that six of the defendants were companies and that 43 defendants were given life sentences. Five more were given 15-year sentences and another five were given ten-year sentences. The indictment was deemed inapplicable to 24 defendants, whose cases were set aside, and one defendant was acquitted.