Academic’s wife calls on British government to publicly state his innocence<\/p>\n
A British university student has been charged with spying \u201cfor a foreign state\u201d in the\u00a0United Arab Emirates<\/a>.<\/p>\n Matthew Hedges has been\u00a0kept in solitary confinement for the last five months<\/a>, his wife\u00a0Daniela\u00a0Tejada said last week.<\/p>\n And now\u00a0the\u00a031-year-old\u00a0PhD\u00a0student at Durham University, who was arrested at Dubai airport on 5 May after a two-week visit,\u00a0has been charged with \u201cspying for and on behalf of a foreign state, jeopardising the military, economy and political security of the UAE\u201d, the country’s\u00a0attorney general\u00a0Dr Hamad\u00a0al-Shamsi said in a statement.<\/p>\n Investigators had gathered evidence from his\u00a0electronic devices and intelligence from UAE security agencies, he added.<\/p>\n Mr Hedges appeared in court in the UAE\u2019s capital Abu Dhabi last week after a first hearing earlier this month. Ms Tejada\u00a0said he was not\u00a0informed of any charges.<\/p>\n \u201cFor nearly six\u00a0months, my husband Matthew Hedges has been held in an undisclosed location in the UAE in solitary confinement with very limited access to the consulate or his family and no access to a lawyer until last week,\u201d she said in a statement after Dr Shamsi’s announcement.\u00a0\u201cInformation about his case, why he was being held and on what charges has been very difficult to attain and verify. This has been incredibly stressful and emotionally draining.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that the charges are \u201cfalse and unsubstantiated, as is the purported evidence to support them\u201d, before urging\u00a0the British government to publicly state his innocence.<\/p>\n \u201cI no longer know what to do to get Matt out of prison in the UAE,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cI am calling on the UK government to clarify publicly that Matt is innocent of the charges and that there have been many falsehoods said about him. It is the duty of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to protect their citizens abroad.\u00a0This horrifying situation has been going on for far too long.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms Tejada\u00a0said her husband only met his legal representative for the first time at court last week.<\/span><\/p>\n She said: \u201cThe entire hearing was in Arabic, with only the questions directed at Matt being translated into English.\u00a0It has now been confirmed to us that Matt was told he was being charged with gathering information and sharing it with a foreign agency \u2013 the UK government.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The case will be back before the court on October 24 to allow him to prepare his defence.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cThe prosecution has therefore had over five months to come up with a case for trial and Matt\u2019s court-appointed lawyer has been given two weeks with no further access to Matt.\u00a0To call this a fair judicial process is, to say the least, highly inaccurate. Matt has never been allowed to speak about his case with anyone.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was never given the opportunity to look for a lawyer to represent him, especially as it was not known what he needed to be represented for.\u00a0The charges against Matt are false and unsubstantiated, as is the purported evidence to support them.\u00a0Matt continues to be denied appropriate medical care for his mental health and remains in solitary confinement.\u201d<\/p>\n Durham University\u2019s website states that\u00a0Mr Hedges is a doctoral student in the school of government and international affairs,\u00a0whose research interests include civil-military relations, political economy and tribalism.<\/p>\n Last year, he co-authored an article in an academic journal on the\u00a0Muslim Brotherhood political organisation and the Gulf Cooperation Council, of which the UAE is a member.<\/p>\n The UAE is a tourism and trade hub for the Middle East, but tolerates little public criticism of its monarchy or policies and is opposed to the Islamist ideology of the Brotherhood.<\/p>\n The Independent<\/em>\u00a0has contacted the British Foreign Office for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Academic’s wife calls on British government to publicly state his innocence A British university student has been charged with spying \u201cfor a foreign state\u201d in the\u00a0United Arab Emirates. Matthew Hedges has been\u00a0kept in solitary confinement for the last five months, his wife\u00a0Daniela\u00a0Tejada said last week. And now\u00a0the\u00a031-year-old\u00a0PhD\u00a0student at Durham University, who was arrested at Dubai airport on 5 May after… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[89],"class_list":["post-2475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-independent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}