Briton, 21, jailed for 9 years in Dubai over £3 cocaine ‘set-up’
A BRITISH student sentenced to nine years in prison last week for possessing cocaine worth less than £5 says he was brutally tortured into making a false confession, written in a language he does not understand.
Ahmad Zeidan, 21, who was born and brought up in Reading, Berkshire, was studying aviation in Dubai. He was arrested last December in the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah.
In a dramatic phone call to this newspaper from his cell two days after his trial in Dubai, he said he only signed the confession, in Arabic, because he was hooded, repeatedly beaten, stripped naked and threatened with sexual assault. ‘I didn’t know what I was signing. I can’t read Arabic,’ he said. ‘But I wanted the torture to stop.’
Zeidan said he had gone for a drive with two acquaintances one evening when the car, being driven by a man he barely knew, was stopped by police. The drugs – just 0.04g of cocaine, with a British street value of about £3 – were found in a bag in the glove compartment.
The two other men received much shorter sentences last week of four and six years.
Zeidan said his was longer because he faced a charge of ‘inciting’ the others to use the drug – on the basis of the disputed confession. ‘I had no idea there were drugs in the car. I only signed the papers after hours and hours of torture that went on for days,’ he said.
‘Every time the guards’ shift changed, they would beat me. They stripped me and said they would have me raped.’
Another prisoner, facing trial on rape charges, was moved into his cell and threatened to sexually assault him. When he complained, he was beaten again, then put in solitary confinement.
He added: ‘For eight days I just disappeared. My family had no idea where I was, and they [the authorities] wouldn’t let me call the British Embassy. A lot of the time I was hooded. They were the worst days of my life.’
Foreign Office documents seen by this newspaper say that when Zeidan was finally allowed to meet consular staff, UK officials raised his claims with the Sharjah authorities. They were told he was being punished for making ‘false allegations’ about the rape threat.
Last week, lawyers from Reprieve, the human rights charity, submitted a dossier to the UN, setting out details of 20 cases of alleged torture in the United Arab Emirates – Zeidan’s included. Three of the cases involve British citizens. The use of torture by Emirates police is ‘systematic’, the dossier says.