Pensioner who faced prison in Dubai over noisy neighbour dispute can return to UK
A BRITISH pensioner who faced jail in Dubai after confronting noisy neighbours has been allowed to return home.
Ian Mackellar, 75, from Aberdeenshire, was in the emirate to help his daughter settle into a new job.
He had been accused of trespass by neighbours – who, he claimed, threw a drink over his infant granddaughter – meaning he was banned from leaving Dubai and could have faced a prison sentence. He has instead been fined AED 3,000 (£650) and told he can leave.
The Mackellars had alleged that the neighbours staged a party on New Year’s Eve that grew louder in the early hours – despite them messaging to ask for the volume to be turned down.
Mr Mackellar then went to ask in person, taking his 18-month-old granddaughter with him as she was awake.
Having knocked on the door and received no reply, he said he ventured down a path to the garden to ask for the party to move indoors.
He claimed some guests pushed him and shouted at him and that the host threw a drink over his granddaughter.
Mr Mackellar told the neighbour he
would report the incident, but his daughter decided against it as she was new to the area. However, the neighbour filed a police complaint for trespass.
Human rights campaigners say it is “standard practice” in Dubai for people to pre-emptively file a police report when at risk of being reported for their own behaviour.
Radha Sirling, chief executive of Detained in Dubai, a campaign group which helps victims of injustice in the United Arab Emirates, said Mr Mackellar was “essentially pushed to plead guilty”, before being told he would only be fined. She believes the intervention was a result of the negative coverage the case was receiving outside Dubai.
Mr Mackellar’s experience is the latest in a series of similar cases in the UAE in recent years. Matthew Hedges, a British academic, was arrested, tortured and handed a life sentence in Abu Dhabi in 2018 after being accused of spying, before being pardoned.
He has called for the UK Government to intervene in the sale of The Telegraph to the Redbird IMI investment fund, which is mostly funded by Abu Dhabi royalty, based on the regime’s “disregard for human rights”.