The UAE does not operate a competent justice system.
In criticising the British government for not doing enough to help her husband, the academic Matthew Hedges, Daniela Tejada is not alone. She joins a long list of victims and their families who assumed the British government would go into bat for them, only to be sorely disappointed.
The plight of Hedges, who was convicted of spying and given a life prison sentence, evokes my own experience. When I was lured to Dubai in 2014 and thrown into prison without charge, I eagerly awaited the first visit of officials from the British embassy. Yet all I got were two non-Brits hired by a diplomatic staffing agency, and all they said they could do was ensure I was being treated reasonably and getting adequate food.
There was no attempt to protest about the disregard of all basic judicial principles. They even failed by their own remit, as they didn’t get me the food I needed (I’d just had stomach surgery).
The conditions I was kept in were, at times, appalling. There were beatings, I was raped and at one stage a guard said to me, “Be careful, British prisoners die here.” It was hot, there was overcrowding, and access to lawyers and other personal representatives was often limited to a few minutes a week, with a guard listening in.
In my 22 months’ incarceration, I had one humane head of prison, but he was quickly demoted to a lesser jail after trumped-up charges were levelled alleging he had taken bribes. The authorities clearly don’t want prisoners to be treated humanely.
I’m sympathetic, really, I am. And David Haigh’s decision to campaign and go public despite the government’s approach of softly, softly in case we upset them is one I support. The UAE may have what looks like a modern holiday destination in Dubai, but underneath it all is a barbaric medieval theocracy.
We know this. But people still go there and still fall foul of the repressive system. Sometimes foolishly because they ignored advice. In the case of Matthew Hedges, he appears to have been doing research for his Phd. The confession can be taken with a pinch of salt – regimes such as this have no qualms about extracting such confessions via dubious means. Sure we had just such a system ourselves once and Walsingham used it to effect during the 16th Century, but it seems that the UAE is still there.
The point is, as I have already said, we know this. And Brits regularly fall foul of this foul regime’s incompetent, vile, repressive Sharia system and yet they still go there hoping perhaps that it won’t happen to them and complain when it does, expecting the Foreign Office to bail them out. Well, as Haigh found out, good luck with that one.
So, yeah, all power to David Haigh, but the best advice he and anyone else can give is don’t go to these shitholes in the first place.
Yup, you said it, just don’t go to any of these places…ever.
Jim’s comment is spot on:
People who go poking around in wasps nests tend to get stung, regardless of their intentions. If you’ve got to 31 and received an alleged ‘education’ in international affairs you should have worked that one out.
Childish wasp nest poking is what Gaza idiots do too, then cry when stung.
See also:
He was playing with fire. He wrote an article on the Muslim Brotherhood and the GCC and about the history of the relationship between the GCC and UAE, which has been very fractious recently….