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British businessman detained in UAE calls for UK government protection, says guards forced him to sign human rights document

January 18, 2025 at 5:25 pm

A British Union flag on top of the Victoria Tower, part of the Houses of Parliament in London, UK, on Thursday, May 23, 2024. [Bloomberg via Getty Images]

A British businessman detained in Dubai has revealed that Emirati prison authorities attempted to force him to sign a document claiming that his human rights are being upheld, urging the UK’s Foreign Office to grant him protection.

70-year-old Ryan Cornelius, a businessman and father-of-three, was reportedly unjustly imprisoned in Dubai back in 2008 over an alleged case of fraud amounting to £370 million ($450.6 million). Since then, he has been detained in prison for over 16 years, with UAE authorities having extended his original sentence of 10 years to until 2038.

According to the newspaper The Independent, Cornelius has now sent a letter to the British Foreign Office, urging his government to protect him against “aggressive” prison officials after they allegedly tried to force him to sign a document claiming his human rights were being upheld.

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“The relationship between jailers and prisoners is inherently coercive”, the British detainee stated in the letter. “The former’s power to make life deeply unpleasant for anyone they choose to pick on is fundamental to their enforcement of prison rules. When someone with this kind of power over you tells you to sign a statement to the effect that you are being well treated, you have a healthy incentive to comply in order to avoid being treated even worse.”

The attempt was reportedly the first time in almost 17 years of imprisonment in which Emirati authorities told Cornelius to sign a document pertaining to his human rights. Upon his arrest in 2008, prison authorities reportedly gave him a document in Arabic – a language which he hardly speaks –  and claimed he would be released from detention if he signed it. The guards had put him in solitary confinement after he obeyed them, however.

The Briton’s brother-in-law, Chris Pagett, is reported to have stated that Cornelius is being forced to go “days on end” without access to fresh air, with one prison guard particularly “throwing his weight around” by aggressively searching cells and closing down the complex’s food shop.

The report is the latest revelation in recent years on the human rights abuses rampant throughout prisons in the UAE, committed even against Western nationals within that system.

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