UAE rulers: See no evil!
Photo: Captured image from video tape showing UAE"s Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan torturing an Afghan migrant worker.
In a sign of closing ranks, the UAE ruling family has blocked internet access to all sites showing the horrific footage of a royal prince torturing a migrant worker.
The New York Times reported on Friday that all ‘websites with links to the torture tape have been blocked in the Emirates, in violation of the Emirates" own policies.’
No local UAE media reported on the scandal until Wednesday following a short statement by the UAE government, which is dominated by the extended Al Nahyan family.
The statement said that the UAE government ‘understands that the matter depicted on the video was resolved between the two parties and that no criminal charges were brought by either party.’
It therefore seems that there will be no independent investigation into the prolonged torture of an Afghan grain trader by Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is a brother of UAE"s crown prince.
The Afghan grain trader has been identified as Muhammad Shah Poor. He miraculously survived torture but was hospitalized for a long time.
According to ABC News, which first released the disturbing videotape, the UAE government claimed that Sheikh Issa only occasionally indulged in such activities and what was recorded on the tape was "not part of a pattern of behaviour".
Nevertheless, the New York Times reported that Bassam Nabulsi, a US citizen from Houston, Texas, and a former business associate of Sheikh Issa, who smuggled the torture tape out of UAE, has claimed that he has two other videotapes showing the prince torturing other men, including a Sudanese immigrant, with the assistance of 15 to 20 police officers.
Nabulsi, who is now back in the US, also claims to have been wrongly imprisoned and tortured in the UAE, in order to force him to hand over the torture tapes.
The human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, has called on the UAE to investigate and prosecute all those responsible for the violent attacks recorded on the videotape. In a statement released on April 29, HRW said,
‘The government"s failure to prosecute those involved in this undisputed incident of torture and abuse at the hands of a royal family member and the police are an appalling miscarriage of justice.’
The scandal has also caused a number of US politicians to question the wisdom of supplying nuclear technology by the US to the UAE.
James McGovern, a Democrat Congressman from Massachusetts and co-chair of the House Human Rights Commission said of the planned US nuclear deal with the UAE, ‘How can we move forward with such a delicate agreement in the face of such an atrocious human rights violation? ... If it were brought to Congress now I would certainly ask that it be rejected.’
The US Navy operates out of a major base near Dubai and the UAE is one of the closest US allies in the Middle East in its "war on terror". All this is while much of the financial support to the Taliban is known to originate in the UAE.
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