A court in the United Arab Emirates has handed life sentences to 43 activists after finding them guilty of terror offences.
State media said the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal convicted the defendants of “creating a terrorist organisation”.
United Nations experts and human rights groups have severely criticised the mass trial.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said more than 80 human rights defenders and political dissidents – known as the “UAE 84” – were put on trial.
Last January, the UAE’s prosecutor general referred the defendants to the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal on charges of “establishing another clandestine organisation for the purpose of committing acts of violence and terrorism on UAE soil” known as the “Justice and Dignity Committee”.
He said most of the defendants were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UAE since 2014.
Its local affiliate, the al-Islah party, is also banned.
According to the official WAM news agency, on Wednesday the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal “sentenced 43 defendants to life imprisonment for the crime of creating, establishing, and managing a terrorist organisation”.
In addition to the 43 life sentences handed out, 10 other defendants were jailed for 10 to 15 years in prison on the charges of “co-operating with al-Islah” and money laundering, WAM said.
One defendant was acquitted and 24 cases were ruled inadmissible, it added.
The bulk of the defendants have been in prison for more than a decade after they were jailed as part of the “UAE 94” trial in 2013, according to HRW and Amnesty International.
Many had already completed their sentences.
But UAE authorities said the latest charges were “materially distinct” from those brought in 2013, which did not include accusations of financing a “terrorist organisation”, AFP news agency reported.
