Thirty-five French parliamentarians denounced Thursday the possibility of a senior UAE police official taking over the presidency of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), with a complaint in France accused him of "torturing" an Emirati human rights activist.

The parliamentarians, who are members of Parliament and the Senate from the majority and the opposition, sent a letter to President Emmanuel Macron asking Paris to oppose the candidacy of Major General Ahmed Nasser Al Raisi for the post.

Parliamentarians said that Raissi was "on his way" to be elected at the head of the international institution based in Lyon, eastern France, but his "heavy record should keep him from such responsibility."

A new head of the Criminal Police Organization is due to be elected in November.

In their letter, the deputies added that Al-Raisi is "directly responsible for the police forces in his country, which operate with almost complete impunity," and accused him of playing "a central role in the arbitrary detention and violations suffered by many human rights activists."

The official is in charge of managing the security forces in the UAE, and he is its delegate to the Interpol Executive Committee.

Early last week, the non-governmental organization "Gulf Center for Human Rights" filed a complaint in France against Ahmed Nasser Al Raisi on charges of "torturing" the Emirati dissident Ahmed Mansoor, who has been detained in solitary confinement for four years.

The human rights activist was arrested in 2017 and sentenced to ten years in prison the following year because, according to the Emirati authorities, he criticized the authority and tarnished his country's image on social media.

According to the complaint seen by Agence France-Presse, Mansour is being held in Abu Dhabi "in conditions similar to those that prevailed in the Middle Ages and amount to torture."

The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs had published a statement in January 2020 in which said the accusations of the NGO were false.

Mansour, winner of the Martin Ennals Award, which bears the name of the former Secretary-General of Amnesty International, was previously sentenced to three years in prison in 2011 - at the beginning of the "Arab Spring" - for "using the Internet to insult the leaders of the UAE."

He was released in the same year under a presidential pardon, but he was deprived of his passport and banned from traveling abroad, before he was arrested again.