Surely this wasn’t the greatest idea

I HAD to read Durham University academic Matthew Hedges’ ‘piece’ three times to realise how misguided he was to go to the United Arab Emirates to carry out ‘research’ towards his doctoral thesis.

His main task was to examine the evolving ‘national security strategy’ of the UAE. Their defences in other words.

To the surprise of no-one, except perhaps him, he was arrested and got a life sentence! He was released after seven months. Does Matthew Hedges never read a daily newspaper, or watch the TV news? Just about all of the Arab counties in the Middle East, with monotonous regularity, arrest British citizens and lock them up... often charged with spying.

Reading Mr Hedges’ reason for going to the UAE – I can’t say I blame them for ‘feeling his collar’.

For what reason would he want to ‘study’ their defences?

Has the UAE suddenly become a world power? Mr Hedges claims it was all quite innocent.

In the 1960s I was a prison officer at Birmingham Prison. In the early years of that decade we had the Russian spy, Gordon Lonsdale (actually KGB Colonel, Konon Molody) serving a sentence of 30 years for obtaining secret information in what became known as ‘The Portland Spy Trial.’ Eventually the Russians arrested and imprisoned Greville Wynne, a ‘British businessman’ who would consistently plead his innocence. As was the way of things back then, it wasn’t long until Lonsdale and Wynne were ‘swapped’ at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin and our still protesting, wrongfully imprisoned businessman came home. It took around 20 years, but eventually Greville Wynne admitted he HAD been a spy.

Can I suggest that Mr Hedges ‘lowers his sights’ in future. His next mission should be to go Majorca to study their ‘coastal defences’ – if he can find any. At least, he will almost certainly return with a tan!

BOB DOUGLAS, Corbridge