UAE pardons PHD academic

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.

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.

Jalimawe will have to agree to differ.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Yes I agree Jalima it seems he knew the country well but behaved at best naively, I'm not altogether sure I believe his story. However if he was spying he was very inept.

Matthew Hedges was very naïve imo and, if he has lived in the UAE previously he should perhaps have known better than to go around asking awkward questions.

There are thousands of British people who visit the UAE or who live there without any problems.
Different countries, different governments, different laws. People should respect and obey the laws of the country they are visiting.

Exactly Monica, I agree with your comment that many middle eastern countries are becoming more autocratic and less open.
I was invited to Istanbul by friends last year. I've been twice, love the city and enjoyed previous visits but, I declined. The change in the political climate in turkey is evident even in what has been a cosmopolitan city.

Nazanin is quite simply being held as a hostage because the Iranians want the British Government to pay to the country money they claim is being withheld from them.

A young mother makes the perfect hostage and someone whose story will always be in the news, will pull on people's heart strings and in Iranian terms makes the 'perfect' hostage.

Matthew Hedges was certainly researching an area of middle eastern government that would be considered sensitive in the middle east. Despite the Arab Spring many middle eastern countries are rowing backwards and becoming more autocratic and less open, while continuing to spout about democracy and the like. The Khasoggi murder has shown just how autocratic and immune from criticism they consider themselves to be.

Yes Iam64, I have a Turkish friend here, a University Professor who has not visited Turkey since the arrests of academics.
He had no part in the 'coup' but does not trust the regime not to arrest him just because he is also an academic.

The UAE must have wanted something from the UK and this entire episode was planned around that.
It's a bit of a mystery isn't it, why these people who 'know' the country they're visiting or planning to work in, yet put themselves right in harms way.

Maryliza54, professor Ahmadreza Djalali from VUB University here in Brussels has been sentenced to death in Iran.
One of the Walloon TV stations did a programme on people from Europe held in prison there on possibly spurious charges.
It was brought up during the programme that Nazareen had openly critisised the regime prior to visiting Iran.
After BJs comments I imagine any comments on such matters are kept out of the media in the UK.

A good description Bluebelle, he must have known what he was doing was politically sensitive. It is not unusual for people to receive a pardon for UEA day, it is a big celebration there, and an expedient move by the rulers to stop bad press.
I agree with Davidh, people forget living in Europe how differently we live to other parts of the world and take our freedoms for granted, but in many other countries people live in very different regimes with harsh penalties, different cultures and restrictive attitudes.

Good.
They obviously wanted something from us and Hunt proved less inept than Johnson.

He was too inept to be a spy though, wandering around asking political questions etc.

He was supposed to know all about the UAE though and their ways, it’s all a bit odd.

You need to be very careful in a lot of countries, do or say the wrong thing at the wrong time can cause you a lot of problems. We can say anything about our government or religion with no consequences, do that in many countries and will get you arrested.
On one trip I was crossing the border between 2 African countries, there were 4 rowdy South Africans in front of us, the customs officer asked them to remove their hats in front of the Presidents photograph. They declined laughing, the 4 bored police instantly woke up and arrested them, I'm not sure how much in finebribes they paid, quite likely $500.