Ahmed MANSOOR
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Emirati poet, blogger and human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor continued to serve prison terms totalling 25 years in 2025 on vaguely worded national security charges (see Case Lists 2014-2025). He has reportedly been kept in an isolation ward in Al-Sadr prison in Abu Dhabi, where he is being held in ‘terrible conditions‘ in a cell with no bed, no water and no access to a shower, which has significantly impacted his health. The UAE has repeatedly denied him access to family visits.
Arrested on 20 March 2017, Mansoor was later sentenced later to 10 years’ imprisonment, three years of surveillance and a fine after conviction in an unfair trial of ‘insulting the 'status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols' including its leaders’ and of ‘seeking to damage the relationship of the UAE with its neighbours by publishing false reports and information on social media.’ The sentence was upheld on appeal.
In July 2024, Mansoor was further convicted in the notorious UAE 84 trial (see Mohamed al-Roken above), and sentenced to an additional 15 years in prison for allegedly supporting the Justice and Dignity Committee.
In September 2025, the UN Secretary-General's annual report on reprisals against those who cooperate with UN mechanisms cited Mansoor’s case. This was the eighth time that the Secretary-General had denounced reprisals against him, having previously raised concerns in 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2024.
Poet, blogger and human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor was born on 22 October 1969. Before his arrest, Mansoor’s literary analysis and poetry were published in many Emirati newspapers and a collection of his poem أبعد من عدم Beyond Failure was published in 2010. The 2015 Martin Ennals Laureate, and a member of the advisory boards of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, Mansoor was the last human rights defender openly working in the UAE. His love for poetry contributed to his fierce defence of freedom of expression and human rights.