Wife of detained Emirati activist issues urgent plea amid fears he may be handed over to UAE

The wife of Emirati activist Jasim Rashid al-Shamsi, who has been detained and forcibly disappeared in Syria, has issued an urgent appeal to Damascus to reveal his fate, seventeen days after his arrest.

In an audio message published by the UAE Detainees Advocacy Centre, Raghda Kiwan said she had feared the Syrian authorities may be preparing to hand her husband over to the United Arab Emirates.

Kiwan said her husband, who was politically convicted in the UAE in the "UAE 94" and "UAE 84" cases, would be at grave risk if transferred, adding that Damascus "knows well what it means to hand him over to a country whose prison conditions are known to all".

She said she had received "worrying information in recent days indicating an intention to hand him over to the UAE", which she believed "would destroy his life" given his legal status and previous prosecutions over his political activism.

Kiwan repeated her account of the arrest on 6 November in the outskirts of Damascus, when the couple were stopped at a previously non-existent temporary checkpoint.

After officers checked Shamsi's Turkish driving licence, they ordered him out of the vehicle without a warrant or explanation and took him away in an unmarked car.

She said she saw him being transported in their own car, driven by one of the officers, to the Political Security branch in the al-Fayhaa area. She was barred from speaking to him or approaching the vehicle. After searching the car, officers told her the matter was “routine” and forced her to return home.

"From the moment they shut the car door on him inside Political Security, he disappeared completely," she said.

The next day, Kiwan returned to the Political Security branch, but an officer claimed "the car you described never entered", despite her witnessing it with her own eyes.

She said she then visited the prisons administration in Marjeh Square, the Ministry of Interior, the public relations office, and a colonel at one of the security services, but all gave the same answer: "There is no information about him."

"This denial leaves no doubt that we are facing a complete case of enforced disappearance," she said.

Kiwan stressed that their presence in Syria was “entirely legal,” and that her husband had stopped using social media and expressed no political views “against any state,” in line with what she described as Damascus’ desire to maintain good relations with other countries.

She insisted Shamsi "committed no violation inside Syria", and said there has been no official explanation for his detention or for the refusal to allow any contact with his family.