Capital punishment in the United Arab Emirates

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Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the United Arab Emirates, although it is rarely carried out.

Under Emirati law, multiple crimes carry the death penalty, and the sole method of execution is firing squad. Current law theoretically allows the death penalty for treason, espionage, murder, successfully inciting the suicide of a person "afflicted with total lack of free will or reason", arson resulting in death, acts of indecent assault resulting in death, importing nuclear substances/wastes in the environment of the State, adultery, apostasy, blasphemy, perjury causing wrongful execution, rape, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, terrorism, sodomy, homosexuality, drug trafficking and joining the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, although death sentences are frequently commuted to life sentences. Overseas nationals and UAE nationals have both been executed for crimes.

Video Capital punishment in the United Arab Emirates

Notable cases

In 1995, Sarah Balabagan, a Filipino worker, caught the attention of many people living in the UAE. She was reported to have murdered her employer in his Al Ain house, although she has always maintained that she only killed him in self-defence after he tried to rape her. After the UAE president himself got involved, Balabagan was set free and had to pay compensation instead. However, she was deported back to her country and her right to remain in the country was cancelled.

In June 2015, the Federal Supreme Court sentenced an Emirati terrorist woman, Alaa Bader al-Hashemi, to the death penalty for the murder of Ibolya Ryan and planting a "handmade bomb" in an Egyptian-American doctor's home in Abu Dhabi. The woman committed the crime in December 2014 and was executed at dawn on July 13, 2015. This is the only time that a prisoner has been executed within such a short time frame and this is the one of the few cases of a woman being executed.

On 23 November 2017 Nidal Eisa Abdullah, the convict who raped and killed eight-year-old boy Obaida in May 2016, was executed.