Activists have called on the UK to investigate the death in a car crash near London this weekend of a young Emirati who headed a Gulf human rights organization based in the British capital.
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Director of the organization ALQST and daughter of Mohammed al-Siddiq, Emirati political prisoner, Alaa al-Siddiq died on Saturday near London in a car accident after a dinner organized for her 33rd birthday, according to these activists. "
We need the UK authorities to reassure us and eliminate the criminal trail, given the record of the UAE and Saudi Arabia in monitoring, targeting and harassing activists and their families abroad
Sarah Leah Whitson, ALQST board member, said in a statement on Sunday. The latter also heads the organization DAWN, based in the United States and founded by Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who became a detractor of power, assassinated in 2018 at his country's consulate in Istanbul. British police did not react.
ALQST - an organization that documents what Sarah Leah Whiston calls widespread state abuse in the Gulf, including arrests in Saudi Arabia of activists, academics or even members of the royal family - posted on Twitter that it did not found no evidence of a criminal act. "
The police think the same and they will publish the results of their investigation when it is finished,
" added the organization. The director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights, Khalid Ibrahim, called for a thorough investigation, saying the activist was "
constantly in danger
". "
We are working in a very hostile environment and governments like those in the Gulf are using surveillance technologies to hack our accounts.
He told the Telegraph.
“
We all know what happened to Khashoggi,
” he told the British daily.
DAWN called on the UAE authorities to release Alaa al-Siddiq's father, imprisoned according to the organization since 2012, and to allow the young woman's body to be returned to be buried according to Islamic customs in his town. native.
“
His exile (in the UK for over ten years, editor's note) was a direct consequence of his government's repression
,” said Ms. Whitson.
The UAE government has not responded to the activist's death.
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