Human rights organisation Detained in Dubai today called for the immediate safeguarding of Ryan John Michael Pepper, a British father of young children from Ashford, Kent, held in Sharjah CID detention for many months with severely limited family contact.

British father Ryan Pepper has reported that he has been beaten, threatened and psychologically abused inside a UAE detention facility while British officials struggled to obtain meaningful private access to him following repeated safeguarding concerns raised by his devastated family.

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Lee Murray has spent twenty years in a Moroccan prison. Limited access to family. Deteriorating health that now requires proper medical assessment and care. For any human being, that is an extraordinary price.

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The dismissal of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, long-time chairman and chief executive of DP World, has been described as “the tip of the iceberg” by Radha Stirling, founder of Detained in Dubai and a recognised UAE country expert witness.

According to Stirling, the most alarming development is the UAE’s willingness to extradite British nationals to third countries with significantly worse human-rights records, without examining evidence, assessing political motivation, or protecting against torture or coercion.

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“Lee Andrews’ complaint about prison conditions echoes what we hear repeatedly. Our client Albert Douglas has just spoken publicly about being beaten, tortured and left with broken bones while imprisoned in the UAE. These are not isolated incidents.”