URGENT ACTION

PRISONER IN TERMINAL STAGES OF CANCER 

Alia Abdelnoor Mohamed Abdelnoor is serving a 10-year prison sentence and is in the terminal stages of cancer. On 10 January 2019, as her health deteriorated, Alia was transferred from a government hospital to Tawam Hospital in the al-Ain Emirate in the UAE. She is chained to her hospital bed and held in solitary confinement. Her family was not immediately informed of the transfer and was only able to visit her in hospital for the first time on 11 February.

TAKE ACTION: WRITE AN APPEAL IN YOUR OWN WORDS OR USE THIS MODEL LETTER

Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan 
Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
Crown Prince Court
King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz
Al Saud Street,
P.O. Box 124
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Fax: +971 2 668 6622
@MohamedBinZayed
Your Highness,

Alia Abdelnoor Mohamed Abdelnoor, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence, is in the terminal stages of cancer that has spread to her vital organs. On 10 January 2019, as her health deteriorated, Alia was transferred from a government hospital to Tawam Hospital in the al-Ain Emirate. Her family was not immediately informed of the transfer and was only allowed to visit her in hospital for the first time on 11 February. Even though she is bed-ridden and too weak to walk unaided, she is chained to her bed and held in isolation in a windowless room. This amounts to torture and other ill-treatment. Alia Abdelnoor has already served three years and a half of her sentence and is about to die.

As the United Arab Emirates have proclaimed 2019 to be a year of tolerance, we urge you to show Alia Abdlenoor clemency and order her early release on humanitarian grounds as provided for by article 32 of the Federal Law No.43 of 1992. 

Yours sincerely,

Additional information

Alia Abdelnoor Mohamed Abdelnoor, now aged 38, has been a cancer patient since at least 2008, when she underwent surgery in Germany. Since her arrest and detention in 2015, she underwent further surgery and chemotherapy, but the cancer has since spread to her liver and bones.

Prior to her arrest, Alia Abdelnoor had been fundraising to assist poor and war-affected women and children in Syria and some needy families living in the UAE. On 28 July 2015, Alia was arrested at her home in the Emirate of Ajman by members of the State Security Agency (SSA), who raided the house. They did not show a warrant. Alia was beaten and was then taken away blindfolded to an undisclosed place of detention. Three months later she was allowed to call her family for the first time.  

During her enforced disappearance, Alia was held in solitary confinement. She was interrogated for long periods of time while handcuffed and blindfolded; threatened with electroshocks and with the killing of her parents and sister if she did not confess. She was finally forced to sign her “confession” without reading the document.

Her trial began on 27 October 2015, on charges of collaborating with a “terrorist” organisation based outside the country. She denied the charges. In December 2015, she was moved to al-Wathba prison in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital. On 15 May 2017, the State Security Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi sentenced her to 10 years in prison under the 2004 anti-terror law and the 2012 cybercrimes law.

In May 2018, Alia was beaten in prison, handcuffed and shackled and deprived of sleep, and she was forced to stand for long hours despite her inability to do so. As her health further deteriorated, she was transferred to a government hospital where she was chained to her bed. 

Despite certain safeguards in the UAE Constitution and laws, the rights of detainees upon arrest are routinely disregarded, especially in cases where the SSA is involved. SSA officials generally arrest people without warrants, then take them to unofficial secret detention facilities where they are kept for weeks or months without charge or access to legal representation. Detainees are often tortured and otherwise ill-treated. Amnesty International has found that officials often ignore for months families’ attempts to find out where detainees are held. Detainees held incommunicado or in undisclosed places of detention are at heightened risk of torture and other ill-treatment. Such deprivation of liberty by state authorities who conceal an individual’s whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of the law, is enforced disappearance, which is a crime under international law.

PREFERRED LANGUAGE TO ADDRESS TARGET: Arabic, English
You can also write in your own language.

PLEASE TAKE ACTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UNTIL: 11 April 2019 
Please check with the Amnesty office in your country if you wish to send appeals after the deadline.

NAME AND PREFERRED PRONOUN: Alia Abdelnoor Mohamed Abdelnoor (she/her)

Additional TARGETS

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country. HIS EXCELLENCY MR SULAIMAN HAMID ALMAZROUI, Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, 1-2 Grosvenor Cres, Belgravia London SW1X 7EE, 020 7581 1281, email www.uae-embassy.ae/uk Please check with your section before sending appeals after the above date.

Please note that the best way to reach the target is via Twitter as we have major difficulty in getting valid postal addresses for Arab Gulf states.

SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDANCE

We are recommending delivery by making a PDF of the letter, or scanning a printed copy, and posting it as an image Tweeted at the official’s individual Twitter account. This is a bit of an experiment because we have major difficulty in getting valid postal addresses for Arab Gulf states. Twitter offers some advantages in that we can be sure the message is transmitted, even if we can’t make the target read it, and in its public nature, which makes it possible that critical Tweets might be noticed if the target is concerned with his public image. The UAE government also prioritises social media engagement for its own brand image.