Ali Abdullah Fath Ali al-Khaja, 59, was found dead on November 19th in his cell in the notorious al-Razeen prison, after over a decade of arbitrary detention. Emirati authorities have failed to conduct an autopsy nor an impartial investigation into the circumstances of his death.
Al-Khaja was an advocate for peaceful reform, allegedly associated with the Islah Association, which is banned in the UAE, due to the perceived threat it poses to the al-Nahyan family’s rule. In August 2012, al-Khaja was forcibly disappeared and held in an unknown location, without an arrest warrant or an official charge, until March 2013, when he was charged with belonging to a secret organization. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, followed by three years probation. In August 2022, al-Khaja completed his sentence, yet the Emirati authorities refused to release him and instead re-charged him on baseless accusations. The UAE has very vague counter-terrorism laws that allow authorities to exploit their ambiguity to persecute political dissidents. Al-Khaja was prosecuted using this vague law and re-sentenced to another ten years in prison.
During the entirety of his detention, Al-Khaja remained in al-Razeen prison, infamous for its harsh conditions. Human Rights Watch stated that al-Khaja was regularly subject to torture, medical neglect, prolonged solitary confinement, deprived of sleep and denied family visits and access to outdoor facilities. His declining state of health was due to the conditions of this prison which are so severe that the United Nations described them as “a punitive environment that endangers the physical and mental well-being of prisoners.” The Emirati Detainees Advocacy Centre claimed his death to be a direct consequence of the deprivation of medical care and humane detention conditions, described as “slow motion killing policies”, while Human Rights Watch states that his death is a direct result of the years of torture, medical neglect and arbitrary detention.
Al-Khaja’s father died on November 8th, yet the authorities did not inform him until November 18th therefore denying him the right to attend the mourning ceremonies. The following morning, he passed away. Authorities chose to withhold the information of his passing from his family until that evening. Human Rights Watch has stated that since his passing, the prison authorities have denied visitation to all detainees in the facility.
The UAE has refused to carry out an immediate, impartial investigation into al-Khaja’s death. They have failed to provide an explanation of his death to his family, nor the international community. Under international law, states are obliged to carry out independent investigation into potentially unlawful deaths including those that occur while in custody. International Human Rights Law prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life, therefore this imposed an obligation to investigate violations to the right to life, specifically a person detained by the state, who had no concerning injuries or illnesses when detained, yet dies in state custody. The UAE is under an international legal obligation to carry out an immediate and impartial investigation into the death of al-Khaja, resulting in the prosecution and punishment of those responsible. The refusal to carry out an official autopsy is not only illegal under international law, but extremely damning to the UAE’s case. The failure to produce evidence of the cause of death, through an independent autopsy, raises extreme suspicions as to the cause of death.
ECDHR joins Human Rights Watch, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights and Emirati Detainees Advocacy Centre in calling the UAE to launch an immediate, impartial investigation into the cause of al-Khaja’s death, to not only explain the suspicious circumstances surrounding his passing to his family and the international community, but also to prosecute and punish those responsible, in accordance with international law.