Justice Emirates-style

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed, brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the President of the United Arab Emirates (and on of the world’s worst sons), was acquitted yesterday of charges that he tortured an Afghan business associate on his ranch. A video leaked to ABC News shows Issa firing an automatic weapon around the ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.
AFP/Getty Images
AFP/Getty Images
AFP/Getty Images

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed, brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the President of the United Arab Emirates (and on of the world's worst sons), was acquitted yesterday of charges that he tortured an Afghan business associate on his ranch. A video leaked to ABC News shows Issa firing an automatic weapon around the man, stuffing sand in his mouth, sodomizing him with an electric cattle prod, lighting him on fire, and pouring salt on his bleeding wounds, but the court accepted his defense that he was drugged by his associates and was not aware of his actions.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed, brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and the President of the United Arab Emirates (and on of the world’s worst sons), was acquitted yesterday of charges that he tortured an Afghan business associate on his ranch. A video leaked to ABC News shows Issa firing an automatic weapon around the man, stuffing sand in his mouth, sodomizing him with an electric cattle prod, lighting him on fire, and pouring salt on his bleeding wounds, but the court accepted his defense that he was drugged by his associates and was not aware of his actions.

In the video (which is pretty hard to stomach) Issa seems pretty aware of what he’s doing, even directing the camera operator to get a better shot at one point. Those must have been some drugs. 

 

Joshua Keating is a former associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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