With the recent death of political prisoner Ali Abdullah Fath Ali al-Khaja on the 19th of November, 2025, the issues surrounding the prison system of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have come to light. His case captures the manner in which UAE authorities can silence those who are outspoken in any way, shape, or form against the UAE government. Individuals can be arbitrarily detained and sentenced on “terrorist” charges, be stripped of judicial procedural rights in this process, and be detained beyond their sentence through programmes of counseling and rehabilitation. There have been many high-profile cases of the UAE misusing its counter-terrorism laws in order to punish those who are deemed political dissidents.
The majority of the people being held beyond their completed sentences are part of the “UAE94”, a group of government critics who were arrested in 2012 and sentenced to between seven and ten years in prison after a grossly unfair mass trial in 2013. These trials took place on a foundation of fabricated charges and without being afforded standards of due process and procedural rights. The UAE94 arrests and subsequent mass trial were motivated by a reform petition launched on 03 March 2011, essentially requesting democratic elections and reduced legislative abuse. These acts of protest by Emirati citizens were considered acts of terrorism by the state, and persecuted as such.
Federal Law No. 7 on Combating Terorrism Offences has allowed for UAE authorities to detain and punish individuals through a legal basis. While the legality of this basis is under heavy scrutiny with reference to standards of international law, its widespread and systematic application is certain. According to its first Article, a terrorist is defined as “every person who belongs to a terrorist organization, or who has committed a terrorist crime, or directly participated in or caused its commission, or threatened to commit it, or aims, plans or seeks to commit it, or promotes or incites to commit it.” It further defines a terrorist outcome as “causing terror among a group of people, taking lives, causing serious bodily harm, causing significant damage to property or the environment, disturbing the security of the internal or international community, antagonizing the state, or influencing public authorities in the state, another state, or an international organization in the performance of its work, or obtaining from the state, another state, or an international organization a benefit or advantage of any kind.” From the wording of the provisions of Federal Law No.7, any action speaking out against the state can be attributable as “antagonizing the state”, regardless of their actual terrorist nature.
Authorities in the UAE have been exploiting the use of “counselling” or “rehabilitation” centres, using them as a means to keep individuals detained beyond their sentences. On September 4 2019, UAE authorities issued a law with a decree establishing the National Counselling Centre, which later became known as the “Munasaha Law”. The legal basis for establishing Munasaha is Article 66 of Federal Law No. 7. Saudi Arabia was the first to use this method in 2004, in order to rehabilitate extremists and integrate them into Saudi society with the use of professional advice and guidance, pushing them to abandon their extremist ideologies. With regards to the UAE model however, no rehabilitation is used. Instead, the term is simply used as a cover for the extension of arbitrary detention of detainees, allowing the extension to be indefinite.