{"id":26824,"date":"2018-11-23T13:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=26824"},"modified":"2018-11-23T13:00:48","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T13:00:48","slug":"british-phd-student-accused-of-espionage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/british-phd-student-accused-of-espionage\/","title":{"rendered":"Amnesty International slams UAE&#8217;s verdict on Durham University student"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Durham University student, Matthew Hedges, was sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates for spying.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Amnesty International UK\u2019s foreign expert Polly Truscott told\u00a0<em>Voice of London<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMatthew is just the latest person to experience the appalling injustice of a sham Emirati trial &#8211; local human rights activists, political critics and even Emirati judges and lawyers have all been convicted in similar circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019d like to see a far more robust position from the UK in defence of human rights across the entire Gulf region.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hedges was conducting research on the UAE\u2019s involvement in the Arab Spring and its security policies. He was arrested at Dubai airport on May 5thon his way back from a research trip in the UAE.<\/p>\n<p>In October, he was officially convicted of espionage and remained in custody until his court date, November 21st.<\/p>\n<p>Abu Dhabi\u2019s Federal Court officially announced the verdict after a brief five-minute hearing: &#8220;The Federal Appeals Court of Abu Dhabi sentenced Matthew Hedges, 31, to life imprisonment after being convicted of spying on the UAE and providing sensitive security and intelligence information to third parties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There is no information regarding what exactly Hedges allegedly spied on. The nature of the espionage has not been released to the public.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Durkin of Amnesty International UK told <em>Voice of London<\/em>: \u201cWe don\u2019t have much information ourselves \u2013 only that the charges related to his PhD research. We can\u2019t be definitive about the evidence against him \u2013 but we are sure the trial was very unfairly conducted, he was held in solitary confinement for more than five months, and made to sign a confession he didn\u2019t understand at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hedges\u2019 wife, Daniela Tejada she has only been able to speak with her husband for five minutes following his trial and he is suffering from panic attacks.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Jailed spy charge academic Matthew Hedges is suffering from panic attacks and &quot;absolutely terrified&quot; at prospect of serving a life sentence in the UAE, his wife Daniela Tejada says<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/xTgaxVhMnY\">https:\/\/t.co\/xTgaxVhMnY<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/loRetMhU9O\">pic.twitter.com\/loRetMhU9O<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BBCNews\/status\/1065873511778934784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 23, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px\"><strong>Update:<\/strong> Hedges was freed from prison on the 26th of November and returned to the UK the following day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong style=\"font-size: 16px\">Words: Salvi Shahlaie | Subbing: Laureta Doci<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Durham University student, Matthew Hedges, was sentenced to life in prison in the United Arab Emirates for spying. Amnesty International UK\u2019s foreign expert Polly Truscott told\u00a0Voice of London: \u201cMatthew is just the latest person to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":26830,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,75,115,134,144],"tags":[469,1985,2150,4034,5839],"class_list":["post-26824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-investigations","category-specials","category-uknews","category-world","tag-amnesty-international","tag-durham-university","tag-espionage","tag-matthew-hedges","tag-spying"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}