UAE pardons British academic sentenced to life for spying - WAM

 

British academic Matthew Hedges, who has been jailed for spying in the UAE, is seen in this undated photo supplied by his wife Daniela Tejada. Photo supplied on November 23, 2018. Daniele Tajada/Handout via REUTERS

 

DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates on Monday pardoned a British academic jailed for life on spying charges, granting his family's request for clemency minutes after showing a video of him purportedly confessing to being a member of Britain's intelligence agency MI6.

 

The UAE president issued a pardon as part of the country's National Day, effective immediately, according to a statement carried by state news agency WAM.

 

(Reporting by Asma Alsharif; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-11-26

Hunt goes into battle for this bloke; Johnson and Hunt have both gone into battle for Radcliffe in Iran and a former Ambassador hopped over to Laos a few years ago to personally collect a death sentence druggie & facilitate her commutation of sentence and repatriation to UK..? 

If ever any of us need help this (and others like it) should be borne in mind if HMG try the old "Nothing to do with us" or "we cannot interfere".

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/06/samantha-orobator-pregnant-laos-jail

2 hours ago, evadgib said:

Hunt goes into battle for this bloke; Johnson and Hunt have both gone into battle for Radcliffe in Iran and a former Ambassador hopped over to Laos a few years ago to personally collect a death sentence druggie & facilitate her commutation of sentence and repatriation to UK..? 

If ever any of us need help this (and others like it) should be borne in mind if HMG try the old "Nothing to do with us" or "we cannot interfere".

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/06/samantha-orobator-pregnant-laos-jail

What a joke, Laos is awash with drugs and many high up people are fully involved

4 hours ago, evadgib said:

Hunt goes into battle for this bloke; Johnson and Hunt have both gone into battle for Radcliffe in Iran

Johnson put his Bl**dy foot in it...

He's only been released because his wife went very public with the story.

The Foreign Office failed miserably after months of 'softly softly' which is their way of throwing somebody under the bus to preserve commercial interests.

Pretty much anyone will confess to just about anything, if they are under enough duress. Highly doubt he was a British spy. Glad the UAE ended up with major egg on their face. And glad he was released and pardoned. No doubt this had little to do with the great diplomatic skills and pressure from the UK, and more to do with his wife and family raising a real stink, and giving the UAE the black eye they deserves on social media. 

 

Beware of the Middle East. It is a hotbed of zany ideas and outdated notions about civilization. 

A troll post and a reply has been removed. 

Why did the UAE pick him out to charge with spying ?  I wonder if a deal was made with Saudi Arabia to use their influence for a favor or two. But, yes, I don't want to travel thru those countries.

8 hours ago, edwinchester said:

He's only been released because his wife went very public with the story.

The Foreign Office failed miserably after months of 'softly softly' which is their way of throwing somebody under the bus to preserve commercial interests.

In such countries where arrogance and fragile egos reign supreme, the foreign diplomatic services have to tread carefully. On one hand, they do not want to be seen to cause difficulties for the detainees or their families, as so classically happened in the case of Boris Johnson when he said erroneously that a prisoner in Iran had been teaching journalism, which was totally untrue and only cemented the views of the authorities there.

 

In the case of Hedges, his wife and family decided to make it public. Same with Mrs Zaghari-Radcliffe in Iran. But there is another detainee whose family do not want publicity because they believe that will hurt their case. The Foreign Office has to play safe and work behind the scenes. Probably what made a difference in the Hedges case was the accusation that he worked for MI6 (hilariously Hedges was forced on tape to say he was a "captain in MI6" when no such job or position exists!) when this was patently untrue. You would just never send a spy on such a risky mission without diplomatic cover.

 

What probably also helped is that the UAE are rather dependent on the UK in all so many ways. And they apparently were caught on the wrong foot - putting someone in jail who has no "pull" in the UAE only to find that when their bullshit was called that they had nothing but fumes to go on.

 

As regards the British woman of Nigerian origin case, those with slightly longer memories will remember that the woman in question got pregnant in jail and there were all sorts of accusations in the international media as to how that was possible (rape?).  Actually, as it turned out much later, it was allegedly engineered by another inmate so that she would not get the death penalty because pregnant women are not sentenced to death in Laos. What was not understood was that Laos had not enforced the death penalty for years anyway. So there was no facilitation by the UK diplomats in that regard.

 

There was also a whisper that the defendant was not exactly of the fullness of her health mentally and that she might have been vulnerable and easily led. 

 

I am not British nor am I in any way related to a UK diplomat but I am always amazed at how the British media, especially the tabloids, jump on the "lets bash the diplomats" whenever the diplomats try to use their skills and local knowledge to clean up messes that were not of their making. 

1 hour ago, IAMHERE said:

Why did the UAE pick him out to charge with spying ?

His PhD was on the security strategy and policy of the UAE.

19 minutes ago, Briggsy said:

His PhD was on the security strategy and policy of the UAE.

OOPS.  Best to do that sort of thing from Wikipedia not in person, especially if he actually did work for MI6, (which he presumably didn't, from what you say.)   Anyway, thank heavens for that outcome.

Interesting background to Hedges previous life (before he recently became a 'British Academic') in this article.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/27/matthew-hedges-jailed-academic-returns-to-uk-after-uae-pardon

 

The fact that he lived in Dubai, 'off and on'. from the age of nine to his late 20's (he is now 31). Also his previous employment with Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. Neither apparently being mentioned by any of his connections during his incarceration.

 

Seemingly UAE are claiming he could have been released back in July, but was prolonged partly due to insufficient high level assurances by the FO that he was not a spy.

 

Hmmmm.

 

 

4 hours ago, IAMHERE said:

Why did the UAE pick him out to charge with spying ?  I wonder if a deal was made with Saudi Arabia to use their influence for a favor or two. But, yes, I don't want to travel thru those countries.

UK most likely promised them more weapons and fighter jets to continue the genocide in Yemen....