President of United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (L) is welcomed by the President of Egypt Abdel Fattah El-Sisi (R) with an official ceremony at Al Ittihadiyah Palace in Cairo, Egypt on 12 April 2023. [Getty]
Egypt’s parliament has moved forward in approving an extradition treaty with the UAE, raising questions over the fates of political dissidents held in both countries that have notoriously problematic human rights issues.
The extradition treaty was approved by the Egyptian parliament on 9 March, almost a month after the parliament’s Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Affairs okayed it.
It makes it necessary for people given jail terms in one of the two countries who are wanted in the other to approve their extradition to this other country.
“Such a requirement nullifies the whole treaty,” MP Diaaeddin Dawoud told The New Arab.
This was exactly why the parliament’s 9 March session on the treaty was stormy, with some lawmakers, Dawoud included, viewing such a requirement as undermining the treaty and making it useless.
“You cannot make the extradition of those who committed crimes against their own countries conditional on their approval,” Dawoud said.
He and like-minded lawmakers called for introducing amendments to the treaty to make the extradition of people sentenced to jail in one of the two countries, who are wanted in the other country, mandatory.
However, the government’s representative in the legislature defended the treaty by noting that all similar international agreements contain clauses that make the deportation of convicts in countries party to these agreements to the other parties conditional on the approval of those convicts.
“Such treaties primarily aim to boost rehabilitation in an environment that supports those convicted and reduces burdens on their families,” Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Mahmud Fawzi said.
Concerns over Qaradwi’s fate
Approval by Egypt‘s parliament of an extradition treaty with the UAE has brought one prominent case back to the spotlight: Turkish-Egyptian poet Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is currently being held in the UAE.
The treaty does not necessarily mean that it will lead to the handover to Egyptian authorities of al-Qaradawi, lawmakers and legal experts said, because it contains articles that ban the deportation of people to whom it applies without their approval or the approval of their close relatives or lawyers.
There has been concern over al-Qaradwi‘s fate since his handover by Lebanon to the UAE on 8 January, almost ten days after he was arrested in Beirut.
A prominent figure of the 2011 revolution in Egypt and an outspoken critic of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, al-Qaradawi, 54, was arrested by Lebanese authorities on 28 December 2024 on an arrest warrant by UAE authorities. He is also the son of Sunni scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is blacklisted as a “terrorist group” in both Egypt and the UAE and who passed away in exile in Qatar in 2022.
In issuing the warrant, Abu Dhabi cited a video the Egyptian-Turkish poet filmed on 26 December at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, where he criticised the Saudi, Emirati, and Egyptian governments.
His family has repeatedly called for his release and urged Emirati authorities to provide new information regarding his well-being.
After receiving al-Qaradawi from Lebanon, UAE authorities said they had taken him into custody on charges of “engaging in activities that undermine public security”. Some people viewed this as bizarre, because al-Qaradawi was not either a citizen of the UAE or resident of it.
In February, al-Qaradawi’s family revealed that they had received a one-minute phone call from him, marking their first contact since his extradition.
On 5 March, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights quoted a group of independent human rights experts in expressing concern over the “lack of information” on the Turkish-Egyptian poet.
“Our worst fears that Mr Al-Qaradawi would face grave human rights violations if he was extradited to the UAE, appear to have been justified,” the experts said, after previously calling on Lebanon to not extradite the activist to Egypt or the UAE to prevent enforced disappearance and torture.
“Exercising the right to freedom of expression, including political comment or criticism, is not a crime,” the experts said.
“Conflating political criticism with threats to State security or terrorism constitutes an assault on freedom of expression, with worrying consequences for human rights defenders and political activists,” they added.
Growing cooperation
The extradition treaty between Egypt and the UAE is the latest episode in a long series of judicial cooperation between the two countries, both of whom have also had been criticised by international human rights organisations.
Cairo and Abu Dhabi cooperated on numerous occasions in the past years on the handover of people indicted in a wide range of irregularities, including money-laundering and corruption.
The extradition treaty between the two countries makes it necessary for convicts to be extradited to any of them to be nationals of the country where they will be deported.
The treaty, which contains 19 articles in all, also makes it necessary for the country where these convicts will be extradited to have issued final verdicts against them and for the two states to approve this extradition.
Some Egyptian lawmakers hailed the treaty as a good step for judicial cooperation between Egypt and the UAE.
“Such treaties aim to boost social stability for convicts,” Ibrahim al-Heneidi, the head of the parliament’s Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Affairs, said during debates on the treaty.
In November 2016, al-Qaradawi was tried in absentia by an Egyptian court and sentenced to three years in jail for “inciting against the Egyptian regime and publishing false news”.
In October 2018, the Appeals Court upheld a three-year aggravated imprisonment sentence and a fine against the poet and 17 other people for humiliating the judiciary in Egypt.
Some legal experts ruled out the possibility that al-Qaradawi will approve his extradition to Egypt, given prison conditions in Egypt.
Rights groups have on numerous occasions criticised prison conditions in the populous Arab country, sometimes describing them as “inhuman”.
In 2021, Amnesty International cited torture inside the nation’s prisons and what it described as “cruel” and “inhuman detention conditions” in Egypt.
The organisation also claimed that prison authorities in Egypt deny people held for political reasons healthcare to punish dissent.
Other legal experts said some convicts, especially those who do not want to serve their jail terms in their home country, will find a good chance in the treaty to evade extradition.
“Clauses on the need for consent from the convicts or their relatives open the door for preventing the extradition of these convicts, especially if they reject to serve their jail terms in their home country,” international law professor Ayman Salama told TNA.
“Nevertheless, the same clauses benefit convicts who want to serve their jail terms in their home country,” he added.
Local and international human rights groups estimate that Egypt has been holding as many as 60,000 political prisoners and detainees behind bars since president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi took office.
Meanwhile, the UAE, a federation of seven absolute monarchies, prohibits criticism of its rulers and any speech that is deemed to create or encourage social unrest. It launched a spate of arrests and prosecutions targeting dozens of Emirati dissidents who demanded political reform in 2012, in the wake of the 2011 uprisings across the Middle East.
