“I went to Abu Dhabi and began to work in the United Arab Emirates in 2007. I was really excited about my new job and thought I would have a great life. This was before the 5 months I would spend in the hands of the UAE security forces. I didn’t know that I was so close to that hell.
I was working at the time in the Emirates International Investment Company (EIIC), which is owned by Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who has been the United Arab Emirates’ Minister of Interior and Deputy Prime Minister since 2009. I worked hard for 3 years and they gave me more and more responsibilities.
On 3 April 2010, while I was returning from a visit to see my family in Damascus, I was arrested by uniformed Emirati security officials at Abu Dhabi International Airport before I had passed through passport control. They asked me to come with them because they had some questions for me, telling me that I would be freed after. They brought me to a room in which I stayed for ten minutes. Then, they took me outside of the airport without stamping my passport, in such a way that no one could know that I was back in the UAE. Afterwards, they took me outside and forced me into a car – without showing any arrest warrant – and the agents tied up my hands and legs.
After asking me where I lived, they drove me to my house and searched it without showing me any legal documents. They asked me where I kept my files and confiscated all of my electronic devices. Afterwards, they put me back in the car and took me to an unknown location – which I would later learn was the centre of the state security services. At that moment, I still didn’t know why they were holding me or what I was meant to have done.
The first day of my detention, they put me in a room and beat me with a stick everywhere on my body for at least six hours. First, they made me lie on my stomach, then they lifted my legs and beat me. Then they made me stand up and jump despite the pain in my legs while they asked questions about “the leak of the company documents”. I told them that I had absolutely no part in it and that I was on vacation when that happened. I was completely innocent. I would not have come back to the UAE if I had something to do with the leak. However, they didn’t believe me and continued to beat me, insulting me and threatening my family
On the second day, I understood that to them I wasn’t a human being. They put me in an electric chair and they turned it on for 20 seconds. Each time they did it, I fainted from the pain, and they woke me up with cold water. After a long period of questioning, to stop the torture I told them that I would give them what they wanted, and I signed a document which contained false and incriminating information.
For the first three days, they didn’t allow me to sleep, knocking at the door of my cell or throwing water on me. I was cut off from the external world and despite my various demands they didn’t allow me to see a lawyer or my family, who didn’t know where I was. Throughout my entire period of detention, I was never presented before a prosecutor. I would learn later that when my sister enquired about my whereabouts, the authorities simply informed her that I was dead and warned her not to continue her search. I heard more that 40 people being tortured, including women.
Finally, after 5 months of torture and ill-treatment, they just let me out, saying that they didn’t have anything against me, but telling me that I had to leave the country. Though I maintained that I was innocent, I was expelled from the UAE without any explanation.
”What happened to me was a nightmare I have to live with, and I will remember all my life what I have been going through. Now, I decided to speak, and I am just looking for justice for me and for other people who have lived through this or who are still in detention in the UAE. We have to denounce and fight against the impunity from which the perpetrators of this crime are still benefiting”.
