UAE pardons PHD academic

Perhaps he is the person who proves that old saying 'All brains and no common sense?'

In any other country the questions he was asking would cause no problems at all. The Emirates government would have known who he was and what he was doing before he came there and he was already working in the area as an expert adviser so he was a known quantity.

Everything Matthew Hedges did was done in plain sight. He made appointments for interviews with leading experts on all sides. I would expect him to have been taping these interviews. Hardly the behaviour of a spy.

I believe he was caught up by events in a rapidly changing and increasingly reactionary geographic area. Could any expert in the area have even imagined, until it happened, any government luring an opponent to their embassy and murdering him the way Jamil Khasoggi was? In plain sight, with his fiancee outside and many friends and outsiders knowing he was there and waiting his return.

Apparently Matthew Hedges 'says he will sue UAE for false imprisonment', (Today's DT).
I think he would be extremely foolish to do so.
He is lavishing praise on his wonderful wife, and rather less on the Foreign Office, who doubtless did much to secure his release, at what price, one wonders.

I think that Saudi Arabia is a more autocratic country than the federation that forms the UAE. Many foreigners live and work in the UAE, visit for holidays etc and I believe with more freedom than in Saudi.
He either upset someone with his questioning or there was a motive behind his arrest and subsequent release.

eazybee I agree, he may be very intellectual but perhaps not very bright in other ways! And the FO deserves praise for securing his release.

Jal I think you are painting a very rosy picture of migrant workers in the UAE. The skilled ones from NAmerica and Europe generally have one kind of life style but the lower skilled/unskilled ones from South Asia have a very different experience and human rights abuses are common.

The political situation in the Gulf region has changed enormously over the last few years and continues to change in a negative fashion on, almost, a day to day basis.
Personally, after recent events, I would not choose to visit any gulf, or indeed middle east country, in the foreseeable future.

Three years ago an Italian PhD student at Cambridge was tortured and murdered in Egypt. At the time this was explained as a completely aberration to blamed on the particular problems of Egypt. Since then the murder of Jamil Khassoggi and the imprisonment of Matt Hedges, not to mention the many other people of many nationalities, summarily arrested and imprisoned in these countries on trumped up charges, and who remain in prison. This includes British nationals

I have seen no evidence to suggest that Matthew Hedges was 'naive' in his behaviour and lacking in the skills to read difficult situations (I assume that is what perhaps not very bright means). He knows the region extremely well and he is doing his PhD in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, a well established department in one of our world class universities. His trip would have been agreed, researched and security checked before he went. He would not just have decided to travelled there on a whim.

I saw one of the academic staff in MH’s department on TV - he said there was a risk analysis carried out as part of the approval for his research.

Jal I think you are painting a very rosy picture of migrant workers in the UAE.
Yes, as soon as I had posted I thought of them maryeliza and should have added something.
It reminds me of the African workers picking the fruit for our supermarkets in Spain.

ps I was just thinking that migrant workers live in the UAE, people go on holiday there and experience rather more freedom than anyone who visits Saudi. Of course, certain protocols still have to be observed.

'naive' in his behaviour and lacking in the skills to read difficult situations (I assume that is what perhaps not very bright means)
Yes, I did mean that.

It could be termed 'not streetwise' in a colloquial way.

Jalimawe will have to agree to differ.

That's fine!


The alternative is that there is something the UAE wanted and saw a way to get it from the British Government, which is what I said in an earlier post too.

Although I must say also that I have known people, and worked with people, who are incredibly intelligent but had a certain naivety and unworldliness which has been quite astonishing to those of us of a lesser intellectual capacity.