The UN special rapporteur on torture is being urged to investigate Lebanon’s role in the treatment of the Egyptian-Turkish poet and activist Abdulrahman al-Qaradawi, a dissident who has been imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates for more than 10 months over a post he made on social media.

Legal counsel representing Qaradawi filed a complaint to the UN rapporteur on Thursday, asking it to examine the situation.

Qaradawi was arrested by Lebanese authorities after he returned from Syria in December 2024, where he went to celebrate the fall of the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

While there, he posted a video on social media in which he criticised the Emirati, Egyptian and Saudi governments and said he hoped they would suffer the same fate as the Assad regime.

Qaradawi comes from a politically active family. His father, Yusuf Qaradawi, was a prominent Islamist scholar associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who lived in exile until his death.

The Egyptian-Turkish activist was also an active supporter of pro-democracy protests in Egypt, and was sentenced in absentia in Egypt on charges of criticising the judiciary.

It was the UAE, however, not Egypt, that managed to convince Lebanon to arrest Qaradawi after his video in Syria, under charges of “fake news” and “disturbing public security”.

It circulated an arrest warrant for the dissident through the Arab Interior Ministers Council, a little known transnational organisation that fosters security cooperation between Arab states.

Lebanese authorities, under the previous government led by the former prime minister Najib Mikati, complied with the UAE’s request. It extradited Qaradawi to the UAE on 8 January, despite the fact that he was neither a citizen of the UAE nor of Lebanon.

The brazenness of his arrest, which showed that a person could be spirited away to a country where they were not a citizen because of a video they posted on social media, has created a chilling precedent for freedom of expression in the Middle East.

Qaradawi was extradited over the protests of his lawyers and of rights groups including Amnesty International, which warned that he could face torture if sent to the UAE.

Lebanon’s then government dismissed their concerns and justified its decision by saying the UAE promised to respect Qaradawi’s human rights.

Those pledges that his rights would be assured in the UAE, his legal counsel said, proved to be false.

Qaradawi has been held in solitary confinement for more than 10 months, with no access to sunlight, in an undisclosed location. These conditions amount to torture, his lawyers say.

To date, he has not had access to a lawyer nor has he been officially charged with a crime.

“Lebanon hastily approved the extradition on the basis that Abdulrahman’s human rights would be upheld. That promise lies in tatters,” said Rodney Dixon, the international legal counsel for Qaradawi.

Dixon added that even though it was the former Lebanese government that approved the extradition, the current government still had a legal obligation to right the wrong of its predecessor and seek Qaradawi’s return.

“Governments may change but obligations do not. Lebanon was responsible for sending him there, now it must do everything possible to bring him back,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Lebanese prime ministry said the extradition did not take place under the current government. They did not comment further.

The UAE did not respond to a request for comment but had previously told the New York Times Qaradawi’s detention complied with human rights standards.

A group of UN special rapporteurs have expressed concern over the conditions of Qaradawi’s detention, saying that his rights have been violated.

“Our worst fears that Mr al-Qaradawi would face grave human rights violations if he was extradited to the UAE appear to have been justified,” the UN experts said in March.

His family also expressed concerns, as they had been allowed to see him for only two 10-minute visits since he was detained.

“It’s been nearly a year since Abdulrahman was taken from us. The thought of him held alone in a cell, without sunlight, fresh air, or charges brought against him, is heartbreaking,” his family told the Guardian.

“We will not stop until Abdulrahman is safe. All we want is to see him back home surrounded by his family, reading us one of his poems again.”

Qaradawi’s popularity in the Arab world long preceded his visit to Syria. He built a large online following and spoke at political events.

He notably was a supporter of Hamas and praised its 7 October 2023 attack, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel. He dedicated a poem to Yahya Sinwar, the group’s late leader.

Rights groups say his detention creates a dangerous precedent in the region, where any government displeased with a person’s opinion can have them flown thousands of miles away to be imprisoned.

Dixon said: “If governments can hunt down their critics across borders and imprison them, then no one is safe. That’s why the UN and the international community must act now to stamp out this behaviour or risk setting a precedent that endangers us all.”

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