The jailing of Matthew Hedges is a gross injustice
This poisonous incarceration makes the UAE hardly a place to visit, let alone one to defend
The treatment of Matthew Hedges by the United Arab Emirates defies all logic. It is potentially, if not already, profoundly damaging to the UAE’s national interest as well as being an obvious appalling affront to justice, academic freedom and the UK.
Mr Hedges, an academic who was in the region to research his PhD on security was arrested in May, and spent six months in solitary confinement before last week being found guilty of allegedly spying for the British government after a five-minute trial and sentenced to life in prison.
Reading his independent and scholarly analysis published in the spring of last year on “The GCC and the Muslim Brotherhood: What does the Future hold?” it’s perfectly clear that not only is the author a proper independent scholar, who can write in language understood by nonacademics, but he is hardly hostile to the policy of the UAE. Concluding on the UAE’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, he writes: “UAE policy vis-a-vis the MB is the most coherent of those of all GCC members. During the Arab Spring revolts, Emirati society was strong enough to absorb waves of turbulence from the revolutionary turmoil… The UAE will continue to proactively counter Islamist ideology, prolonging its interpretation of the global MB movement as a gateway to al-Qaeda and Daesh.”
Mr Hedges was deeply familiar with the Emirates, having grown up in Dubai, and appears to have had nothing but a strong affection for its society and respect for it. This contrasts with visiting partying Brits who have previously got into trouble with some of the more restrictive elements of its legal code, realising rather too late that the UAE, despite the enticing overt charms of Dubai, isn’t Aya Napa or Magaluf. Some of these Britons’ treatment at the hands of the authorities has hardly presented the UAE in the best of lights, but they are of a different order compared to Mr Hedges’ experience.
His knowledge and background make his treatment by the security authorities all the more surprising, if not, frankly, astonishing. It might help explain how blind-sided the Foreign Office mission in Abu Dhabi has been by his treatment. I assume it has been proceeding on the assumption that as soon as someone in authority understood the position, it would be put right. Reports now suggest that we may be moving towards such a conclusion, but it certainly appears that previous assurances have left our Foreign Secretary angered and deeply embarrassed.
It is said in politics that nothing is ever as good or as bad as it first appears, and given the the choice between cock up and conspiracy, always go for cock up as the more likely explanation for events. I hope it is the case that stupid and incompetent elements of the internal security forces, seeing a conspiracy where none existed, misled by the ruler’s profound antipathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood, decided to first arrest and then beat a confession out of Mr Hedges, who had had the temerity to take an academic’s interest in the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr Hedges may reasonably have assumed that confessing to being a British spy in the UAE could hardly be regarded as much of an offence, as Britain is a guarantor of their defence and doing so would make the mistreatment stop. Sadly, the mistreatment continued, and it took the Foreign Secretary’s intervention to have secured him a mattress in his months of solitary confinement. The combination of virtually no legal advice or proper representation and a perfunctory judicial process has led to this gross injustice, a perilous position for the UAE and a stark choice for the UK.
The UK can only proceed on the evidence available to it. This action is not the behaviour of a friend or an ally. If it is a gigantic foul up, then the implications are now so serious that the Crown Prince and every other Emirati of influence must give it their undivided attention. Two centuries of history, not to mention today’s vast shared economic and security interests, demand no less.
If, however, Mr Hedges’ incarceration is a symptom of an paranoid conspiracy theory gripping the leadership and security institutions of the UAE, it is hardly a place to visit, let alone defend. This poison can’t be allowed to compound the problems of the Middle East any longer, and the UK certainly shouldn’t be a party to it.