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BEIRUT — The United Arab Emirates launched on Thursday a Lebanese doctor after holding him for greater than three weeks over a tweet he printed years in the past, an individual conversant in the case mentioned.
The case of Dr. Richard Kharrat got here to consideration in early April when native media reported that he went lacking from his lodge within the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi.
The Ministry of Overseas Affairs within the UAE has declined to touch upon Kharrat’s case since he was detained in early April throughout a go to to the oil-rich emirates.
Days after Kharrat’s disappearance, Lebanon’s state information company quoted Overseas Minister Abdallah Bouhabib as saying that Lebanese authorities are following the case of Kharrat “who’s in detention within the United Arab Emirates.”
Lebanese activists have launched a marketing campaign on social media calling for Kharrat’s launch.
The individual conversant in the case, who requested anonymity to debate the matter, mentioned the arrest was linked to tweets that Kharrat wrote years in the past and had been seen offensive to the UAE. In one of many broadly circulated tweets, Kharrat poked enjoyable at names of individuals within the UAE and Lebanon.
Kharrat, a gynecologist, is anticipated again house inside days.
Social media is an often-perilous area within the UAE, an autocratic federation of seven sheikhdoms the place the federal government retains tight management over conventional media and makes use of courts to prosecute those that specific opposition or criticism on-line.
Earlier this yr, the nation handed a brand new, vaguely worded cybercrime legislation, which rights teams say additional restricts on-line speech and proscribes jail phrases for individuals who use the web to share, doc or report data that would hurt the state’s pursuits, repute or status. It additionally criminalizes spreading rumors and pretend information.
Kharrat’s arrest got here as relations between Lebanon and the UAE have been tense for months.
The UAE withdrew its diplomats from Beirut in October after Saudi Arabia did so in response to feedback by a Cupboard minister on the time who criticized the battle by the Saudi-led coalition on Yemen. The minister, George Kordahi, later resigned and the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait returned to Lebanon earlier this month. The UAE ambassador nonetheless has not returned to Beirut.
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