British academic freed after spy claim
LONDON/BEIRUT • An academic freed from an Abu Dhabi jail was forced to confess on video he was a “captain” in the British secret service before United Arab Emirates rulers signed off on a presidential pardon.
Matthew Hedges was expected to arrive in Britain Tuesday for an emotional reunion with wife Daniela Tejada, who had campaigned tirelessly for his release.
Tejada described the pardon as “the best news we could have received,” adding: “Our six-plus months of nightmare are finally over and to say we are elated is an understatement.”
She continued to refute the UAE’s insistence her husband had been working for MI6 when he was arrested in May as he tried to leave the country from Dubai airport. He spent almost six months in solitary confinement.
“In my heart, I know that he isn’t (a spy),” she said.
Hedges, 31, a PhD student at Durham University, was filmed confessing to being a British agent in a video shown Monday to a select group of local journalists in Abu Dhabi. In the video, Hedges describes himself as a “captain in MI6” — although no such rank exists in the intelligence service — while in another clip Hedges is shown speaking to someone in an office and saying, “It helps the research to go in an easy way.”
Then Hedges is seen snapping his fingers before adding, “Then it becomes MI6.”
On Twitter Tejada posted a “selfie” of herself and her husband that was taken before his arrest. The caption posted by Tejada read: “I’ve been brought back to life.”
She had earlier told the BBC: “In my heart, I know what Matt is: he is a PhD researcher. His colleagues know it, his family know it and hundreds of researchers and academics around the world know it. The most important thing really is that I will have him back home safely and he will be able to finish his thesis.”
A UAE court had sentenced Hedges to life imprisonment for being a spy at a five-minute hearing last week, prompting a diplomatic rift between the U.K. and its Gulf ally. MPs had called for Britain’s security ties to the UAE to be reviewed while academics pledged to boycott the Gulf state.
Hedges was released after a presidential pardon issued by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s emir, who is also president of UAE.