Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison on Sole Basis of Confessions Obtained Under Torture

27-year-old Al Mrayat moved to Abu Dhabi with his parents in 2009. In July 2011, after his second trip to Iran to visit his fiancée, Emirati State Security officers summoned Al Mrayat with a view to inquire on the reasons for his trip and threatened him before ordering him to go to the Iranian Embassy and secretly record his conversations with an employee.

Three months later, in October 2011, Al Mrayat got a job in Jordan and decided to move back to his country, but he was arrested as he was about to board his flight at Abu Dhabi airport, on 19 November 2011. Al Mrayat was then transferred to an unknown location where he was detained incommunicado and severely tortured for weeks – insulted, deprived sleep, subjected to electric shocks on an electric chair and beaten up – before being transferred to Al Wathba prison in April 2012. On 30 July 2012, he was sentenced to five years imprisonment by the Supreme Federal Court, on charges of spying on the UAE for Iran on the sole basis of confessions extracted under torture. Al Mrayat was not allowed to appeal this decision as under Emirati law the Supreme Court's sentences are not subject to appeal.

The systematic practice, in the UAE, of torture practiced with the aim of extracting confessions during incommunicado detention has already been denounced by Alkarama, notably in the case of the 'UAE 94', in which 94 critics of the government were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for "plotting to overthrow the regime" following an unfair trial by the National Security Court. After her visit to the UAE in January and February 2014, the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (SR IJL) Gabriela Knaul, reported that many individuals arrested by State security agents "were taken to secret detention facilities and kept incommunicado for days, weeks or even months, sometimes in solitary confinement." She also highlighted that more than 200 complaints of torture were presented before judges and prosecutors over the past years, but that no independent investigation was ever opened into the allegations.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) Calls Upon the UAE to Release Al Mrayat

Following a communication sent by Alkarama to the WGAD in January 2013, the WGAD issued an Opinion, in August 2013, recognising the arbitrary character of Al Mrayat's detention and requesting the State to release him immediately. Two years later, however, the young Jordanian citizen remains in prison.

Moreover, although Al Mrayat was supposed to be released on 18 August 2015 – since, according to domestic law, any prisoner with a record of good behaviour shall be released after fulfilling 3/4 of his sentence, and since his good behaviour was recently confirmed by the Jordanian Embassy in the UAE, which contacted the prison administration and reviewed his records – on 28 July 2015, Lieutenant-Colonel Hmoud Al Hajiri visited Al Wathba prison and informed Al Mrayat that he would not be released before completing his full five years sentence.

In light of these facts, Alkarama sent a follow up communication to the WGAD, requesting the Working Group to remind the Emirati authorities of the Opinion they issued in August 2013 regarding the case of Rami Al Mrayat and ask them to end his arbitrary detention by releasing him immediately.

Considering the systematic use of torture and secret detention in the UAE, Alkarama calls on the Emirati authorities to:
• Put an end to the practice of torture in detention centres and systematic use of secret or incommunicado detention;
• Put an end to arbitrary detentions conducted without any trial or following unfair trials;
• Ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Enforced Disappearances (CED).

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