United Arab Emirates pardoned five activists on Monday, a day after they were convicted and jailed for insulting UAE leaders, state news agency WAM reported.
The case had been seen as a gauge of how the oil-producing Gulf state, which allows no political parties, responds to hints of political dissent after uprisings toppled other Arab leaders.
The five were arrested in April on charges of disrupting public order and calling for protests, and had been on trial since June. They were sentenced to up to three years in prison on Sunday.
“The president issued a decree pardoning all of them,” Mohammed al-Roken, a lawyer defending the group, said earlier on Monday. The five had been on hunger strike for two weeks before their conviction.
On his Twitter page, Roken later said one of the defendants, Nasser Bin Ghaith, had been released. He did not say whether the others had left jail yet, but wrote he had spoken to another of the defendants, Ahmed Mansoor and he was “well”.
Mansoor, a communications engineer, was accused of running a website that bin Ghaith and three other defendants used to express anti-government views. The court ordered the website closed.
The UAE has seen none of the public protests that have swept Arab countries over the last 10 months, thanks in part to cradle-to-grave benefits bestowed on its citizens.
Prosecutors said in October one of the activists published a petition urging a boycott of an election for half of a 40-seat consultative council.
Prosecutors said they had evidence the defendants incited citizens to “breach public order and stage demonstrations against the state”.
Three human rights groups said last week that the five activists had been the target of what they described as a campaign of death threats, slander and intimidation.
The state news agency said the five were among a group of more than 550 people pardoned by the UAE president ahead of the holiday marking the 40th anniversary of the Gulf state’s foundation.
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