At least three Britons remain detained in Dubai despite the royal family issuing a pardon to the 18-year-old Marcus Fakana.
The Tottenham-born teenager recently returned to the UK after being sentenced to a year in a Dubai prison for having sex with a 17-year-old.
The campaign group Detained in Dubai, which helped secure the Brits’ release, say he is now “recovering” after months in the notorious Al-Awir Central prison, which another British prisoner recently reported to be “intolerably overcrowded”.
Mr Fakana’s case raised questions about the dangers of tourism in the Gulf state as it has become a favourite for Britons, who make up more than seven per cent of Dubai’s annual visitors, behind only India, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
But his release does little to allay fears that it remains a dangerous place to be arrested.
British tourists have been imprisoned, shackled and tortured in Dubai over the past decade for petty crimes, including using a counterfeit £20 note and touching another man’s hip in a bar, as well as false charges.
Below, The Independent looks at a few of the Brits still held in Dubai and the wider United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as some previous instances of wrongful detention.
Ryan Cornelius
The 71-year-old father-of-three has spent the last 17 years in Al-Awir on trumped-up charges of fraud.
The UAE says he illegally obtained a £370m loan from the government-affiliated Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) by bribing staff members, but the United Nations says the charge of fraud is unjust, and has called for his immediate release.
Mr Cornelius accuses the DIB, which is chaired by a senior, non-royal government official, of being his “effective jailers”.
In January, The Independent revealed that Mr Cornelius wrote directly to the Foreign Office urging them to protect him against “aggressive” prison officials after they tried to force him to sign a document claiming his human rights were being upheld.
In his letter to the Foreign Office, he added that he had been denied access to fresh air and basic facilities. He is already suffering from the cumulative health effects of tuberculosis, Covid and high blood pressure, which have been partially brought on by poor prison conditions.
Mr Cornelius’ family have urged the Foreign Office to do more to secure his release.
