A British university student has been charged with spying “for a foreign state” in the United Arab Emirates.
Matthew Hedges, has been kept in solitary confinement for the last five months, his wife, Daniela Tejada, said last week.
Now the 31-year-old PhD student at Durham University, who was arrested at Dubai airport on 5 May after a two-week visit, “has been charged with spying for and on behalf of a foreign State, jeopardising the military, economy and political security of the UAE”, the country's attorney general Dr Hamad al-Shamsi said in a statement.
Investigators had gathered evidence from his electronic devices and intelligence from UAE security agencies, he added.
Mr Hedges appeared in court in the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi last week, after a first hearing earlier this month. Ms Tejada said he was not informed of any charges.
“For nearly 6 months, my husband Matthew Hedges has been held in an undisclosed location in the UAE in solitary confinement with very limited access to the consulate or his family and no access to a lawyer until last week,” she said in a statement after Dr Shamsi's announcement. “Information about his case, why he was being held and on what charges has been very difficult to attain and verify. This has been incredibly stressful and emotionally draining.”
She added that the charges against her husband are “false and unsubstantiated, as is the purported evidence to support them”, before urging the British government to publicly state his innocence.
“I no longer know what to do to get Matt out of prison in the UAE,” she said. “I am calling on the UK Government to clarify publicly that Matt is innocent of the charges and that there have been many falsehoods said about him. It is the duty of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to protect their citizens abroad. This horrifying situation has been going on for far too long.”
The Independent has contacted the British Foreign Office for comment.
Ms Tejada said her husband only met his legal representative for the first time at court last week.
She said: “The entire hearing was in Arabic, with only the questions directed at Matt being translated into English. It has now been confirmed to us that Matt was told he was being charged with gathering information and sharing it with a foreign agency – the UK Government.”
The case will be back before the court on October 24 to allow him to prepare his defence.
She said: “The prosecution has therefore had over five months to come up with a case for trial and Matt’s court-appointed lawyer has been given two weeks with no further access to Matt. To call this a fair judicial process is, to say the least, highly inaccurate. Matt has never been allowed to speak about his case with anyone.
“He was never given the opportunity to look for a lawyer to represent him, especially as it was not known what he needed to be represented for. The charges against Matt are false and unsubstantiated, as is the purported evidence to support them. Matt continues to be denied appropriate medical care for his mental health and remains in solitary confinement.”
Durham University’s website states that Mr Hedges is a doctoral student in the School of Government and International Affairs whose research interests include civil-military relations, political economy and tribalism.
Last year, he co-authored an article in an academic journal on the Muslim Brotherhood and the Gulf Cooperation Council, of which the UAE is a member.
The UAE is a tourism and trade hub for the Middle East, but tolerates little public criticism of its monarchy or policies and is opposed to the Islamist ideology of the Brotherhood.
