By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) -A U.N. body has found that the United States and the United Arab Emirates are jointly responsible for holding an Afghan man in arbitrary detention in Abu Dhabi for over two years in a case rights groups say is emblematic of thousands of others.
The man, a former police force colonel who had worked with U.S. forces and received threats from the Islamist Taliban movement, was evacuated with his family during the hurried U.S. exit from Afghanistan in 2021 under former President Joe Biden.
Referred to as “Mr. B” for his protection, the man was evacuated by private U.S. operators who told him he would stay in the UAE for 14 days before being transferred to the U.S., the U.N. documents showed.
Instead, he was held in the “Emirates Humanitarian City” (EHC)- a vast housing complex the UAE says is used to house conflict evacuees – for more than two years under constant surveillance and subject to restrictions, they said.
“The Working Group thus finds the United Arab Emirates and the United States of America jointly responsible for Mr. B.’s arbitrary detention,” said the document published this week.
The five-member Working Group, mandated by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate cases of deprivation of liberty, asked both states to provide compensation and reparations.
It said that the U.S. violated the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – a legally binding treaty that guarantees freedoms.
The U.S. mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. State Department, which has helped resettle over 100,000 Afghans, has previously said under Biden it was committed to relocating and resettling all eligible Afghans.
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The man was transferred to the U.S. in early 2024 and is now at liberty.
The UAE, which did not formally respond as part of the U.N. process, is not a party to the Covenant. Still, its actions contravened articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.N. group found.
“The circumstances clearly demonstrate that Mr. B. was held there against his will, prohibited from leaving and subjected to conditions that meet the established criteria for deprivation of liberty,” it said.
The UAE did not immediately respond to a comment request. An official has previously said the country is committed to ensuring Afghan evacuees live in safety, security and dignity, and said evacuees have received high-quality housing, sanitation, health, counselling, education and food services.
In 2023, Human Rights Watch said the EHC complex was “essentially a prison” with as many as 2,700 Afghans held there.
Falah Sayed, an officer of MENA Rights Group which submitted the case, said the U.N. finding could apply to thousands of refugees locked in EHC.
The U.N. Working Group has no enforcement mechanism, but its findings are often cited in court cases and cases it covers frequently lead to detainees’ release.
(Reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay in Washington; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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