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British politicians and family closeted businessman Ryan Corneliusclosed in Dubai in prison for the last 16 years please sir Keir Starmer to fight for freedom of investors while visiting United Arab Emirates for trade negotiations.
Father-of-three Mr Cornelius, 70, spent his children’s lives languishing in prison for an alleged £370m fraud. The UAE says he illegally obtained a loan from the government-linked Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) by bribing staff members, but the United Nations says the fraud charge is unfair. Mr Cornelius accuses the DIB, chaired by a senior, non-royal government official, of being his “effective jailers”.
Iain Duncan Smiththe former Conservative Party leader, says the UAE imprisoned Mr Cornelius “deliberately to seize his assets” financed by loans. Some of those properties, Mr Cornelius said in a letter to Sir Keir this week, which he dictated to his brother-in-law Chris Pagett over the prison phone in an attempt to secure the Prime Minister’s help in negotiating his release, “are now being advertised as the latest luxury housing development in to Dubai, worth many times the value of their loan”.
In the announcement issued for The TelegraphThe UAE claims that Mr. Cornelius was convicted after “a fair trial in which all processes were followed”, and that his sentence was extended after he did not repay the creditor.
Mr Pagett describes the UAE’s repeated justifications for keeping the businessman in jail as “complete, cynical, bare-faced lies”.
Despite the UAE constitution stating that prisoners should be released when they reach the age of 70, Mr Cornelius wrote in his letter to Sir Keir that his sentence had been tripled, at the request of the DIB. He is now scheduled to be released in 2038, when he will be 84 years old.
Already Britain’s longest-serving victim of arbitrary detention, his family say he is suffering from the cumulative health effects of tuberculosis, Covid and high blood pressure.
“Ryan realized the nightmare might never end,” Mr Pagett said The Independent. “The time he lost cannot be regained. His health deteriorated and the children grew up without him. Everything he ever owned was taken from him.”
During the period he was in prison Mr. Cornelius was kept in solitary confinement. He spent most of the day in line to make the one call a day he was allowed to speak to his family. The only chance he got on the line for his 22-year-old youngest son Josh’s rugby games came through Mr Cornelius’ wife, Heather, who talked about the game over the phone. He had never seen his son play in person: Josh was only six years old when Mr. Cornelius was arrested.
As Sir Keir visits the UAE on Monday, Mr Cornelius and his family have called on Downing Street to negotiate his release. Mr Cornelius sent a letter to Sir Keir before the trip asking for help as another “desperate roll of the dice”.
After the United Nations said in 2022 that it believed Cornelius was being detained arbitrarily, Britain’s Foreign Office agreed to write a cover letter for the family’s request for clemency from the UAE.
The Foreign Office took eight months to review the 13-page UN document, with a cover letter later written by a junior minister. The appeal for clemency ultimately failed.
However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs still does not officially recognize that the detention of Mr. Cornelius the unjust. His supporters in parliament argue that this is to avoid upsetting a nation with which the UK hopes to negotiate trade deals.
“The Foreign Office has this weird idea that if you don’t make hard cases, people will like you and do nice things for you,” says Mr Duncan Smith.
Cross-party calls from the backbenches for Mr Cornelius’ release are growing.
Earlier this week, Mr Duncan Smith launched a parliamentary debate calling for Mr Cornelius’ release and, using parliamentary privilege, named members of the DIB who he and his family believe are responsible for his detention. They include Chairman Mohammed Ibrahim Al Shaibani and eight directors. The Foreign Office will be handed these names by family representatives next week and asked to sanction them.
Responding to Mr Duncan Smith, Hamish Falconer, the foreign secretary, told the Commons that he had raised Mr Cornelius’s request for clemency with the ruler of Dubai, adding that the ministry was committed to meeting the family while the cases remained ongoing. He did not comment on Mr Duncan Smith’s request to sanction DIB members.
The Independent has contacted the DIB for comment.
When in opposition, David Lammythe current Foreign Secretary, has been a vocal advocate for the rights of Britons wrongfully imprisoned abroad, including Mr Cornelius.
However, when he visited the UAE in September, he did not raise the case of Mr. Cornelius. A statement released by the Foreign Office said Mr Lammy and his Emirati counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan discussed “building on deep historical ties to develop a forward-looking partnership”, including “strengthening bilateral trade and investment ties”.
A short note on the discussion of “humanitarian issues” is pasted at the end, without details.
Mr Duncan Smith, when asked why successive governments have not sanctioned the UAE over the issue, said: “You know why? Show me the money. The [UK] the government is chasing money.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The situation of Ryan Cornelius has been raised in the UAE and officials are continuing to provide consular access to Mr Cornelius and are in contact with [his family] at this time. It is a serious case; we are absolutely aware of that and the UAE knows we are very concerned.”
Mr Pagett says Cornelius takes hope from the fact that they are still fighting for him.
“He’s not completely abandoned,” says Mr. Pagett, “although his conditions are still incredibly dehumanizing.”
It’s a shame, he adds, that this support doesn’t seem to be coming from those who Mr. Cornelius needs most.