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Special Report
So Much For Human Rights
Dubai’s ongoing outrage against an American citizen.
Everyone who follows presidential politics agrees that Ohio will be a battleground state again this year. President Obama has visited there numerous times in recent months and formally opened his reelection campaign at Ohio State University. Mitt Romney knows that no Republican in recent decades has won the White House without carrying Ohio.
One wonders, therefore, why a shocking human rights case involving an Ohio citizen in a distant land isn’t getting top-level attention from Mr. Obama or his rival.
It involves Zack Shahin, a businessman who built a successful career in property development in Dubai during the years it was booming. Suddenly, in March 2008, he was kidnapped and thrown into jail without being charged, held incommunicado and forced to sign Arabic documents he could not read, in the face of threats to his wife and children. This was a time when some of the Dubai government’s investments were heading south. Its prosecutors alleged he had misappropriated $100,000 from his company. His board, however, had unanimously voted the money to him as a bonus. This was confirmed by his company’s outside auditor, Ernst & Young.
Dubai, which is part of the United Arab Emirates, has laws that on paper seem to provide the same citizen guarantees as ours. In practice, they are honored in the breech. Time after time, for years on end, the court gave the prosecutor permission to hold Shahin in jail 30 days, then another 30 days, ad infinitum, in order to gather “evidence.”
It has been over four years now that Zack Shahin has been in a Dubai prison. To read a summary of all the legal activities is to read of a land that has made a sham of its own laws and professed respect for human rights. After several requests, a judge told Shahin that bail would be granted for $135,000 and he was to have it ready the next day. The next day, the judge was mysteriously removed from the case and replaced by another judge who reset it at $5 million.
The case has involved delayed hearings, charges made then dropped, and admitted perjured affidavits by prosecution witnesses. Altogether, Sachin has had 200 court hearings. Only 17 of these lasted longer than three minutes and none longer than 40 minutes. Still, no bail, and no trial in over four years.
Meanwhile, Shahin’s health has declined. At times his medicine has been withheld when he dared complain. An angiogram and knee surgery required him to be hospitalized. The doctor recommended six-weeks of recuperation and physical therapy. Thereupon, Dubai security agents moved into his room and kept the TV on at high volume 24 hours a day. They said they were carrying out orders and that the only way for him to have a quiet recovery was to ask for hospital discharge and return to jail. It was pure harassment. This harassment then carried over to the U.S.
Dubai authorities maneuvered to have the Texas subsidiary of his old company, Deyaar, sue him. This would have required “discovery” under U.S. law that might be used — or so they hoped — to gather evidence against him in the Dubai cases. Then, when Deyaar was about to have its Texas case dismissed by Shahin’s U.S. counsel, it dropped both its Dubai and Texas suits against him.
With no end of his travails in sight, Shahin has begun a hunger strike. Local reports indicate that lately there has been a wave of hunger strikes in UAE jails by men locked up for alleged financial crimes.
Has the U.S. government done anything about Shahin’s long-running travesty? Not nearly enough. The U.S. ambassador and consul made several inquiries, including a request for a meeting with the ruler of the UAE (not granted). Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder brought up the matter in bilateral meetings with their UAE counterparts; however, no positive action resulted.
Contrast this with four cases over the last year where high-level intervention by the U.S. worked in four human rights cases: Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese activist; Arkadi Gontmakher, an American business man in Russia; some women journalists trapped in North Korea. and the three American hikers who were captured at the Iraq-Iran border.
Even though there is some security sensitivity regarding the UAE (U.S. defense forces on its territory), the UAE is not immune to international opinion or law. What is called for, after all the private conversations have failed, is a public rebuke of Dubai’s egregious violations of its own due-process procedure, in addition to a demand by the U.S. government for due process rights, immediate bail, and a trial for Zack Shahin. In this case (hint) the victim is a businessman from Ohio — Presidential candidates take note.
Mr. Hannaford is a member of the board of the Committee on the Present Danger.
About the Author
Peter Hannaford was closely associated for a number of years with the late President Reagan, beginning in the California Governor’s office. His latest book is Presidential Retreats.
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Gary B| 5.21.12 @ 8:19AM
Doesn't the same thing happen here? How many times has the FBI framed innocent people to protect their informants who also happen to be criminals? How about all the 3am no-knock, wrong-address breakins where innocent people are shot? How about the no-warrant special provisions of the Patriot Act? This is not your father's America.
Vern Crisler| 5.21.12 @ 12:57PM
Yuck, I hate all this moral equivalency stuff coming from the anarcho-dorkism crowd.
Gary B| 5.21.12 @ 6:06PM
How about immoral equivalence?
Vern Crisler | 5.22.12 @ 12:15AM
Would you rather be in an FBI prison or in an Islamist prison?
Indy| 5.21.12 @ 8:26AM
"Ohio will be a battleground state again this year."
OH is a coal state so why is this a battleground state, same with PA and others, I just don't get it. Come on GOP, the messaging isn't that hard, just use facts and Obama's own words mixed in with some Joe Biden.
http://freebeacon.com/not-the-real-world/
Gary B| 5.21.12 @ 9:14AM
The longest-running frustration of my life has been watching Republicans snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It did, indeed, appear to be congenital stupidity, but in recent years I've concluded it's by design. After all, the operative word in the phrase, Republican establishment, is "establishment." Republican politicians seem quite comfortable in their loyal opposition role faking outrage at the latest Democrat power grab.
The real Battle for America is not Republican vs. Democrat. It's DC vs. us. How simple can you get?
Indy| 5.21.12 @ 9:57AM
indeed, the EPA is at it again, but any word from the GOP? zzzzzzzzzzzz
http://wizbangblog.com/2012/05.....ng-alaska/
Gary B| 5.21.12 @ 6:11PM
Outrageous action by the other party is one of the ways they raise money. The sleeping giant, tax paying public public is slowly catching on to the DC waltz.
John Navratil| 5.21.12 @ 8:50AM
Been there! Seen that! I would never return to work or vacation in Arabia. I'll take my chances in Gary B's America.
Gary B| 5.21.12 @ 9:21AM
Two years ago I decided to take my chances in Texas. I miss my home state, but it's now a hopeless socialist basket case. If we're lucky, America will either straighten up or break up.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.21.12 @ 8:59AM
Perhaps the Constitution of the U.A.E. in action is what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was directing the Egyptians toward in her recent remarks.
John786| 5.21.12 @ 10:42AM
I hope this unfortunate guy gets a fair trial ( : very unlikely). But maybe people should look closer to home. Thousands have disappeared. Habeus corpus is null and void and detention without trial is the norm for those that the state declares as enemy combatants. When liberties at home are not defended it becomes that much harder to make pleas in other jurisdictions.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.21.12 @ 12:13PM
John786;
I've never had the impression that you were a resident of or posting from the United States (though my guess would be Londonistan). Am I incorrect in that impression?
John786| 5.21.12 @ 12:39PM
Londonistan. Dearie me. you've obviously snorted to much neo-con/ Zionist propaganda.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.21.12 @ 2:57PM
Is that a yes that you're a resident of the UK?
John786| 5.21.12 @ 4:38PM
Would it make you happy if I was from London? A great city in God's green and pleasant land.
Gary B| 5.21.12 @ 6:20PM
"A great city in God's green and pleasant land," where defending your life against an armed criminal is against the law. It seems God has turned his attention elsewhere, having given up on those who refuse to help themselves.
John786| 5.21.12 @ 7:18PM
Lighten up Gary. Proportionate defense is I have been reliably informed standard doctrine within the UK. As elsewhere.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.21.12 @ 10:35PM
"But maybe people should look closer to home."
I'm just asking you to identify what (or more appropriately, where) "home" is.
Gary B| 5.22.12 @ 12:30AM
Proportionate defense is a laughable concept. You're awakened in your own home by someone breaking in. You switch on the light to see a maniac coming at you with a knife. But, wait... your defense must be proportionate, else you'll sit in jail longer than the perp. This is sheer lunacy. So, something this crazy gets exposed by the application of common sense and your response is, "lighten up?" I guess homeowners doing hard time for defending their families were just too uptight, right? As you've been realiably informed, they didn't lighten up enough. God help the sane people of Europe because they're being ruled by world class lunatics. And, we're not doing so well ourselves, either.
Occam's Tool| 6.6.12 @ 3:09AM
786, wrong again, dimwit. As a former Commonwealth Permanent resident, I can tell you that there are fascinating differences between US Law and Commonwealth law on those issues.
Occam's Tool| 6.6.12 @ 3:07AM
Londonistan. Home of the Islamic rapes of teenage girls and honor killings.
Occam's Tool| 6.6.12 @ 3:06AM
"Thousands" have disappeared? Bullshit. 786, you are a lying sack.
Petronius| 5.21.12 @ 11:58AM
This is what happens when "government interests" want to take over "your business." Any government; any business.
Jack London| 5.21.12 @ 12:21PM
So - how many regimes with appalling human rights records have we installed and supported over the years? We've just resumed arms sales to Bahrain - and sell many millions worth to Saudi and UAE. So you would have thought our government could easily ask for this guy back.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.21.12 @ 2:58PM
What makes you think that our government is interesting in anything except taxing his $100,ooo bonus?
POST American| 5.21.12 @ 11:20PM
---As we put to one side those latest
reports of 'beauty secret' capsules
filled with dessicated and powdered
baby parts issuing out of RED China
to one side ----
---YES, ---YES ---let's talk 'human rights'.
---Here! ---Here!
nathan| 5.22.12 @ 8:13AM
I feel sorry for this guy but this and worse happens all the time to people under our control at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Gitmo, the FOB's and other places. At least he wasn't tied up, had the crap beaten out of him, then had a high ranking Dubai official conduct a mock execution on him.
So let me get this straight folks. When WE subject detainees to 24/7 excrutiatingly loud noise, that's fine because WE ARE DOING IT, when someone does it to one of our people, it's a human rights violation. Really? Padilla was treated like this, his due process rights were violated for two years (?) and how many of you complained then?
So again, when we do this, well, we're the good guys we the AMERICANS only do it for THE BEST OF INTENTIONS, judge us by what we say, not by what we do. But when others act EXACTLY as we do as we see here, THEN it's a human rights violation.
NO. The same standards apply to everyone including us. Good intentions don't justify bad actions folks. And that's exactly what we're seeing here. You have to walk it the way you talk it. And we don't.