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One prisoner of conscience sentenced during the year remained held beyond expiry of his sentence. Elie Dib Ghalib, a Lebanese Christian, arrested in al-'Ain in Abu Dhabi in December 1995 and allegedly tortured (see below), was sentenced in October to one year's imprisonment and 39 lashes when a Shari'a court ruled that his marriage to a Muslim United Arab Emirates national was null and void and his relationship therefore a criminal offence under the country's law. He remained in detention in al-'Ain Central Prison although he had completed his sentence.
At least three possible prisoners of conscience were detained during the year. Two brothers, Jassim and Yassir 'Issa al-Yassi, and Ahmad 'Abdullah Makki were arrested in June in Dubai because of their relationship with Ja'far Hassan Sahwan (see below), a political opposition activist from Bahrain who had escaped to the United Arab Emirates to avoid arrest; they remained in detention without trial and possibly without charge at the end of the year. Two other possible prisoners of conscience detained in 1995 were released without charge. Sheikh 'Abd al-Mun'im al-'Ali, an Iraqi national arrested in January 1995 (see Amnesty International Report 1996), was released in November and deported to a third country. Hisham Fa'iq Muhammad Sha'sha', a Palestinian refugee under the protection of the un High Commissioner for Refugees in the United Arab Emirates who had been held untried since September 1995 as a suspected government opponent, was expelled to Romania in May.
Torture and ill-treatment of political and other detainees in police custody continued. Elie Dib Ghalib (see above) was allegedly beaten and flogged repeatedly during pre-trial detention.
During the year, at least three people, including Elie Dib Ghalib, were sentenced to flogging and another, sentenced in 1995, was flogged. In June, a married couple were each sentenced to 210 lashes for theft. It was not known by the end of the year if the sentence had been carried out. Sarah Balabagan, sentenced to 100 lashes in October 1995, was flogged in January (see Amnesty International Report 1996). She was released in July and deported to the Philippines.
One person was executed and two others were believed to remain under sentence of death. Khalid Mohammad Moussaji, sentenced to death for murder, was executed in October. It remained unclear whether the death sentence on Mashal Badr al-Hamati, a Yemeni national, had been commuted by President Al-Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (see previous Amnesty International Reports). In December, the Federal Supreme Court reportedly announced that it would uphold the death sentence on John Aquino, a Philippine national, unless he receives clemency from the family of the victim whom he was convicted of murdering in 1989 (see Amnesty International Report 1996).
At least nine Bahraini nationals, all possible asylum-seekers, were forcibly returned to Bahrain, where most of them were detained upon arrival as possible prisoners of conscience (see Bahrain entry). They included Ja'far Hassan Sahwan (see above), who was arrested in Dubai in June and handed over to the authorities in Bahrain. He remained in detention in Bahrain at the end of the year as a possible prisoner of conscience.
Amnesty International appealed for the release
of detainees held for political or religious reasons if they were not charged
with recognizably criminal offences and given fair trials. The organization
sought assurances that those detained were being treated humanely and called
for investigations into all allegations of torture and ill-treatment. It
appealed for commutation of all death sentences and sentences of flogging.
The government did not respond to Amnesty International's communications,
or to its request to visit the country to investigate human rights violations.
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