“Please save his life Sheikh Mohammed”, pleads wife of Dubai detainee

In a heartfelt letter hand delivered to the UAE Embassy in London, Naomi Douglas begs for Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum’s intervention in her husband’s wrongful detention. Naomi has met Sheikh Mohammed and their grandchildren went to school together.

“Naomi and her family have been in despair over Albert’s arrest and detention”, said Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai. “Their businesses have been looted and their bank accounts emptied. This is all of Albert’s hard work in Dubai over the last decades lost to predatorial and false allegations against him. The courts refused to admit bundles of evidence that would prove Albert’s innocence. No forensics were undertaken on the cheques he was accused of bouncing and no investigation was undertaken. Naomi, in desperation, is appealing to Sheikh Mohammed for Albert’s life, not knowing whether she will ever see her husband again”.

Naomi’s letter reads:

I am writing on behalf of my husband Mr Albert Leonard Douglas. A British expat that has lived full time in Dubai since 2003 and has worked and invested into Dubai since 1997 without a blemish to his good name. He has been unfortunately jailed as a consequence of his son’s business failings whereas he was catatonically not involved in any wrong doings despite the distorted allegations made against him, whereas he has personally always been a true supporter of Dubai and the vision of Dubai.

He has suffered terrible emotional and even physical actual damage beyond description as you may already be aware of during his detention so far. My husband is an old, frail and soft man that has never been convicted of a crime in his entire life until this time, whereas he never dreamed that he would ever be put in such an extremely vulnerable and compromising position of unjust attacks against his good name or character like this. Albert further suffers from a medical condition called angina, a heart condition that has seen no care of or medication for to date by the UAE prison authorities despite our relentless requests to be considered, also to note that in one such instance where he was even physically beaten when pleading for his much needed heart medication while he was being held at the Al Ain Central Prison by the soldier guards back in February of this year.

As an older and more frail man as was already terrified at that time due to the environment he found himself in, as well as the traumatic situation he has now been put in generally, alongside the sometimes inhumane treatment to himself and to many of the others around him, he obviously has never recovered from the irreversible physical and mental harm that he suffered from that day till this.

Unfortunately this is not the only human rights violation to his health and well-being I am saddened to report, so far ignored by the UAE authorities as he continues to suffer from the consequences of his beating with on-going regular dizziness, pains, migraines and other lasting health effects to his head and body trauma. He has mentally been broken, financially been ruined and emotionally been destroyed, all of which is despite the very real fact that he was not any part of any wrongdoings of the actual main case in real life and is in turn suffering all of the serious backlash consequences of his own business failings as a direct result of the financial entrapment as associated with the main case against him.

All of his assets have now been lost to him, his business has been completely ransacked and looted, not to mention how his dignity was stripped from him in every way imaginable. The uncountable amount of opportunists that have taken advantage of him at every opportunity has been endless, making false claims as well as simply in many cases lying for their own gains while taking whatever they could from their positions of power or leverage while he was in this horrible situation of complete helplessness.

I ask and I beg you as the ruler of Dubai, as a grandfather, father and a husband yourself, please will you look to see if there is any possible means in pardoning, releasing or deporting my husband in this one off case of extraordinary circumstance as it has been handled and left in. He has quite literally been betrayed by all of those around him in business, he has been beaten and now he is facing endless related consequences from his time in detention.

I have in the past met you personally during several exhibitions back in the days you would attend yourself personally, my grandchildren would even go to school together, I have even followed you throughout my knowing you as a kind and humble man that I know you can be, and today I humbly ask for your kind intervention into this horrible case that has seen my husband go through as a victim of circumstances rather than a criminal through no fault of his own at the time, please can you help save his life.