A new report alleges that the United Arab Emirates has tortured several foreigners in police custody without charge, including several U.S. nationals.
The international organization Human Rights Watch claimed Tuesday that after their arrest in August and September 2014, a group of ten men faced “beatings, forced standing, and threats to rape, kill, and electrocute” over the course of two weeks of investigation. The men, who included two dual U.S.-Libyan citizens and one Canadian-Libyan, were arrested under suspicion of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE named as a terrorist group several months after the arrest.
The Americans, brothers named Kamal and Mohamed Eldarat, remain in detention to this day. They have not seen a lawyer, and according to Human Rights Watch “it is not clear if they have been formally charged with any offence.” (RELATED: Abu Dhabi Jails American For Facebook Post Made In Florida)
According to their relatives, when the brothers were arrested “a female officer told the family that they would never see Kamal again.” When appealing to the U.S. embassy for help, officials “told the family that it cannot call for the men’s release.”
UAE authorities do not acknowledge the location of the alleged secret detention facility outside Abu Dhabi. (RELATED: White House Inaction On Muslim Brotherhood Fuels Bizarre Conspiracy Theories)
Detainees who have left the same facility say that their treatment included beatings while blindfolded. Interrogators also apparently “strapped them into what they were told was an electric chair,” “threatened them with rape,” and in at least one case beat a man while hanging from an iron bar from his wrists and ankles.
The Eldarat brothers were reportedly forced to confess being Muslim Brotherhood members under torture; their relatives say that they were never members of the group.
Evidence obtained through coercion (torture) is not admissible in an American court of law, nor under many international legal standards.
The Muslim Brotherhood is among the factions fighting in the ongoing civil war in Libya. UAE forces are on the other side.
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