A court in Abu Dhabi ruled on Sunday that 45 minutes of video showing a member of the emirate’s ruling family torturing an Afghan grain merchant — by stuffing his face with sand, firing a machine gun close to his body, hitting him with a whip and an electric cattle prod, cutting his bare buttocks by striking him a nail embedded in a stick and driving over him — did not prove the prosecution’s case that the sheik was guilty of a crime.

As the Abu Dhabi daily The National reported, the court ruled that Sheik Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a brother of president of the United Arab Emirates, had “diminished liability” for his actions, which he claimed took place while he was under the influence of medication. The trial was held in Al Ain, an oasis city near Sheik Issa’s farm where the Afghan man, Mohammed Shah Poor, was tortured in 2004.

The video came to light last year when excerpts from it were broadcast in an ABC News report that featured an interview with Bassam Nabulsi, one of Sheik Issa’s former business partners, who said his brother had filmed the torture at the request of the sheik. Sheik Issa believed that the victim, Mr. Shah Poor, had shortchanged him in a business transaction.

Mr. Nabulsi and his brother, who are involved in a separate lawsuit against Sheik Issa, were found guilty by the court in Al Ain that acquitted the sheik. The National reports that the Nabulsi brothers, Lebanese-Americans who are no longer in Abu Dhabi, “were sentenced in absentia to five years in prison and deportation for drugging Sheikh Issa, videotaping a crime scene and blackmailing him with the tape.”

Tony Buzbee, an attorney for the Nabulsis, said in a statement sent to The Lede on Monday:

The verdict is a farce, and shows why the world should have no confidence in the [United Arab Emirates'] justice system. This was a show trial, held completely in secret, with one objective: to relieve international pressure on the ruling family so that the pending military treaty with the U.S. would go forward. The fact is, and the evidence is clear, Sheikh Issa tortured numerous people and he ordered the torture to be videotaped. The sheikh’s abhorrent behavior also was not isolated. I offered the U.A.E. authorities additional videotape indicating that at least 20 other people were tortured by the sheikh. [...] The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, continues to coddle the U.A.E. and look past serious human rights and security concerns there.

The United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is a part, made an agreement with the United States, during the final week of the Bush administration last January, to import import nuclear fuel for use in an energy program. The United States formally signed the agreement with the U.A.E. in December.

As my colleague Robert Worth explained last April, the agreement means that the U.S. will “share expertise, technology and fuel in exchange for a promise by the Emirates to abide by international safeguards and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.”

Three of Sheikh Issa’s employees were sentenced to prison terms of one to three years for helping in the assault on the grain merchant. A Syrian cook was sentenced to one year in jail for beating Mr. Shah Poor, and two workers,identified by Reuters as an Indian and a Palestinian, were each sentenced to three years for sodomizing the victim with a stick. As Reuters notes, 80 percent of the residents of the United Arab Emirates are foreign workers.

According to The National, the victim, Mr. Shah Poor, “was compensated for his injuries in a private settlement in the days after the incident.” The newspaper also reported that shortly after the verdict was announced by the court, Mr. Shah Poor, “congratulated the sheikh, kissing him on both cheeks.”

Describing the scene in court, and perhaps the power dynamics in Abu Dhabi, Lara Setrakian of ABC News wrote on Twitter on Sunday: