Rights groups call on UAE to release Jordanian journalist, Tayseer Al-Najjar

Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders yesterday called on the UAE to immediately release Jordanian journalist Tayseer Al-Najjar after he completed his three- year prison sentence on 13 December.

The groups protested Al-Najjar’s detention in a letter to UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash.

According to the group’s, Al-Najjar has spent more than three years in UAE prisons, violating his right to freedom of expression and to a fair trial.

The UAE Federal Supreme Court convicted Al-Najjar under article 29 of the UAE cybercrime law in March 2017 and sentenced him to three years in prison and a fine of 500,000 dirhams ($136,000) for “insulting the state’s symbols”.

Although, Al-Najjar has served his sentence, he has to remain in prison for another six months because he cannot afford to pay the large fine.

“Al-Najjar, who should not have been jailed in the first place, should not have to suffer another day in a UAE prison,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “If the UAE were truly committed to its rhetoric of tolerance, it would not have ripped Najjar away from his wife and children for years-old innocuous Facebook posts.”

READ: UAE paying large sums of money to spy on its own people