Members of the British Parliament have called on the government to take action to help a citizen with HIV who has spent more than a decade in prison in the UAE, despite being pardoned in 2014.
The British newspaper “The Independent” reported that 15 deputies had signed a letter asking the ministers to file a case against the Dubai authorities regarding the “illegal detention” of 54-year-old Michael Smith, noting that copies of the letter organized by the “Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights” group were sent. To Secretary of State Dominic Raab, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat, and Chair of the Joint Commission on Human Rights, Harriet Harman.
Dr. Tania Newbery, one of the curators of the Observatory, said: “Today, together with 15 senior parliamentarians, we shed light on the case of British citizen Michael Smith who is being held in prison despite having received a pardon and completing his sentence.”
She explained that “the UAE may be a major ally of Great Britain, but it does not mean that the government authorities abandon an illegally detained British citizen, such as Michael.”
Smith was arrested in 2009 on charges of stealing 100 million pounds (about 140 million dollars) from a real estate company owned by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The stolen amount was later reduced to 500,000 pounds, according to the newspaper.
The Independent reported that Smith spent two years in a Thai prison, and during that time he claimed that he contracted HIV in the prison hospital. He was extradited to the UAE in 2011, where he was accused of fraud, misuse of public office and fraud, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Dubai, and he was told that the time he spent in Bangkok would not be counted from his prison term.
His lawyer said he had neither legal representation nor translators to understand the court procedures issued in Arabic. Later, the Appeals Court reduced the sentence to six years and set a date for his release on October 23, 2017. In June 2014, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid pardoned him as part of an amnesty for the month of Ramadan.
According to what the newspaper reported, “Smith was not released and it was discovered that he was tried for a second time in a civil court in 2012 without his presence or knowledge, after the real estate company filed a repeated lawsuit against him.”
She said, “Prison authorities denied Smith regular access to HIV medication or adequate health care, even after he underwent surgery in July 2020 to remove a kidney after being diagnosed with cancer.”
It stated that British authorities had not had access to a copy of the 2012 court ruling that kept Smith in prison despite multiple requests from the British embassy.
Source: “The Independent”