BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch has accused authorities in the United Arab Emirates of mistreating and denying adequate medical care to a terminally-ill Emirati woman in prison on terrorism charges.

The New York-based rights group said Alia Abdel Nour, 42, was diagnosed with breast cancer after her arrest in 2015 and is being denied regular contact with her family. “Abdel Nour should be allowed to spend her last days watched over by her family, not by prison guards who keep her shackled to a hospital bed,” HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director Sarah Leah Whitson said in a statement.

The rights group called on the Emirati authorities to release Abdel Nour “given her current condition”. Abdel Nour’s family says she was forced to sign a document saying she was refusing chemotherapy, HRW said in a statement. — AFP