Emirati man gets jail term for posting poem on social media

An Emirati man was sentenced on Thursday to three months in prison for posting a poem on social media.

Saqr Al Shehi, who is known as the ‘Poet of Sensations’, has been sentenced to three months in prison and fined Dh250,000 by Abu Dhabi Federal Court on Thursday 

This step comes within the framework of Article 29 of the UAE’s 2012 cyber crime law  which provides for prison sentences of between 3 and 15 years for online activism.

The UAE is the first country in the Middle East to implement such a widely-condemned cyber law.

The court's order came only few weeks before the kick off of the Emirates Festival of Literature.

In this regard, the International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE (ICFUAE) has issued a statement calling on authors participating in the Festival to raise awareness of the lack of human rights in the UAE.

Read the statement: http://icfuae.org.uk/news/attending-emirates-festival-literature-speak-o...