FCDO must increase UAE travel warnings after Brown inquest

The inquest into the death of British citizen Lee Bradley Brown, who died in a Dubai police station 11 years ago, heard that the number of new cases of Britons reporting torture or mistreatment in Dubai to the Foreign Office had surged from 3 per cent of the global total to 13 per cent in just four years.

“This is something we have repeatedly raised with the FCDO,” says Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai and Due Process International, “We are really talking about a crisis-level surge in torture, abuse, and human rights violations against British and other foreign nationals in UAE detention.”

Stirling explains that the dramatic increase in the numbers of cases corresponds to Dubai’s successful marketing of the UAE as a safe and modern tourist destination for Westerners, the country’s pursuit of investment in the UK and Europe, and the almost non-existent consequences Dubai faced over the illegal raid on an American yacht in 2018 to recapture the escaped daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Sheikha Latifa.