THE government supported a two-day arms fair hosted by Dubai police that ended yesterday, despite reports of Emirati officers torturing people including British citizens.
UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), a government department, organised a reception at the British embassy in Dubai for businesses selling drones and spy equipment to the human rights-abusing United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Only “law enforcement officials” were allowed into the Emirates Security Exhibition and Conference (Emsec), where British companies touted “law enforcement systems” directly to the torturers.
Meanwhile, British citizen Ahmad Zeidan, 22, has been tortured and imprisoned in the UAE for two years.
Police in the Emirate of Sharjah found 0.04g of cocaine — with a street value of around £3 — in the glovebox of a car in which he was a passenger.
Mr Zeidan, from Reading in Berkshire, alleges that, over the course of a week, he was hooded, stripped, kept in solitary confinement for two days, beaten and threatened with rape.
He was then forced to sign a “confession” in Arabic, a language he cannot read.
He was never offered the services of an interpreter before being given a nine-year sentence and threatened with the death penalty.
In Dubai Central Jail, around 75 per cent of prisoners report having been tortured into “confessing” through the threat and use of violence including electric shocks, research by human rights group Reprieve has found.
Lending credence to these reports is the revelation that Dubai police have requested “electronic public order equipment” from British suppliers.
Reprieve says it has previously raised concerns with UKTI about its support for Emsec which, this year, ended on the same day that the UAE expected to be re-elected to the UN human rights council.
The government spent £12,000 of public funds to encourage British firms to attend last year’s event, according to information obtained by Reprieve through a freedom of information request.
There is “growing pressure on the Tory government for more transparency” over “close connections” with human rights-abusing nations such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Campaign Against Arms Trade spokesman Andrew Smith told the Star.
Reprieve’s Maya Foa added: “The Emirati authorities have boasted to the UN about their human rights record, but the reality is dismal.”
The British government should make clear that it wants no part in such abuses, she insisted, and should “demand the release of victims like Ahmad without delay.”
