The United Arab Emirates has taken custody of Egyptian poet and dissident Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi amid a campaign by human rights activists and experts to prevent his extradition to the Gulf state. As per the Middle East Eye, On January 9, the UAE’s official news agency, Wam, confirmed that Abdul Rahman had been taken into custody after arriving in the Gulf state from Lebanon.
Fears of his imminent extradition increased on January 8 after a plane owned by RoyalJet landed in Beirut. RoyalJet is the same Emirati company that rights groups have said wrongfully extradited a Bahraini dissident from Serbia in 2022.Abdul Rahman’s lawyers in Lebanon have reportedly lost contact with him.
The 55-year-old dual Egyptian-Turkish national is a poet and political activist who had been working and living in Türkiye.He was a major proponent of the 2011 Egyptian revolution that ended the decades-long rule of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He also worked on the campaign of Mohammed el-Baradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who ran for the Egyptian presidency after Mubarak’s rule ended after the Egyptian revolution.
Abdul Rahman was arrested in Lebanon on December 28 after returning from Syria, where he took part in celebrations following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.He had recorded a three-minute video and posted it on X.
The UAE and Egypt filed subsequent requests for Abdul Rahman’s extradition, with the Lebanese government acting only on the Emirati warrant.