The United Arab Emirates is holding five activists in prison after they completed their sentences between one and three years ago, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday.
The five were given three or five years in jail on state security charges in 2014 and 2016 “following what appear to be unfair trials,” HRW added.
Rights group have previously criticized the UAE for unfair trials and torture allegations by political prisoners.
The five men – sentenced for “joining a secret organization” – are activists with alleged links to al-Islah, an Islamist political movement which the UAE has banned, saying it is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
One of the detainees, Osama al-Najjar, was sentenced to three years in prison in 2014 after using Twitter to campaign for the release of his father, saying he was tortured in prison.
The father was among 68 people jailed in 2013 on charges of plotting a coup.
All five activists remain behind bars at al-Razeen prison, located around 120 kilometres south of the capital Abu Dhabi in the middle of the desert.
Al-Islah was set up in 1974 as a charity organization.
The crackdown began in the mid-1990s, as the group was dissolved in the emirate of Dubai.
Abu Dhabi has become less tolerant towards the group following the 2011 uprisings and the brief rise of the Muslim Brotherhood group in Egypt.
(dpa/NAN)
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