[4] Depending on the social context, many or the vast majority of arbitrarily arrested individuals may be held incommunicado and their whereabouts can be concealed from their family, associates, the public population and open trial courts.
Dembele was one of the primary whistle-blowers in a $15.5 million (7.21 billion CFA francs) corruption scandal involving the governmental Office du Niger, which oversees agricultural production in Segou.
On 29 September, the media reported that following a violent protest in Nouakchott against the national registration initiative, security forces entered private residences without warrants and arrested approximately 20 individuals.
The leading figures of the 2020–2021 Thai protests that called reforms to the monarchy, Arnon Nampa, Panupong Jadnok, Parit Chiwarak, Jatupat (Pai Dao Din), Panusaya (Rung), and Benja Apan were all detained await trial in 2021, in series of detainments and releases, some were imprisoned accumulatively for more than 200 days, after Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha declared to use all laws including Lèse-majesté to the protesters in November 2020.
Reports of UAE authorities arbitrarily targeting Shia residents, whether Lebanese, Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani, or otherwise, often emerge at times of increased regional tensions.
[26] A British football coach, Billy Hood was detained by the Dubai authorities and sentenced to ten years in prison over CBD vape oil left in his car by a visiting friend.
During February 2022 visit of Prince William to the UAE for Dubai Expo 2020, Hood was "violently attacked" by four Emirati prison guards after he punched the wall of his jail cell out of "frustration".
She was arrested and charged with "breaching the privacy of government employees", stemming from an incident during Lar's arrival at Dubai airport, where she and her travelling companions were kept by immigration officials in a room for six hours without explanation.
The action, which Dubai authorities charged as "sharing a video of government employees online without their consent", resulted in a sentence of one year in prison, later reduced to three months on appeal, following social media campaigns and representations from Lar's parliamentarian.
[29] On 28 January 2022, the Emirati authorities arrested Steve Long, a British man from Stockport, for telling airline staff he feared there was a bomb on the plane he was about to board to return home, during an apparent psychotic breakdown.
Long was arrested and taken to a local hospital, where he was diagnosed with acute psychosis and delirium; the UAE's medical board determined he was not of sound mind at the time.
Family members believed that Long, an ambulance paramedic, and former soldier who had served tours in Iraq and Bosnia, working closely with bomb disposal units, was affected by a drone strike in Abu Dhabi in January 2022, triggering his mental collapse.
[31] In August 2024, two brothers from Ohio, Joseph and Josua Lorenzo, were sentenced to 4 months in Dubai prison over allegations of alcohol consumption, resisting arrest, assaulting an officer and damaging a patrol vehicle.