Date: Feb 27, 2019 Source: The Daily Star HRW accuses UAE of mistreating jailed cancer patient Agence France Presse BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch accused Tuesday 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. "Abdel Nour has also said that security forces have subjected her to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment," it added. Abdel Nour was arrested in July 2015, according to her family, and convicted of terrorism in 2017 in a "case marred by due process violations", the rights groups said. She was charged of financing militant groups, managing websites and publishing news and information about them, local newspapers have said.