PARIS (Middle East Eye) – A lawyer for two British citizens who were detained and tortured in the United Arab Emirates has filed a universal jurisdiction complaint in France against an Emirati official in the running to be the next president of Interpol.
If French authorities proceed with the case, the UAE’s candidate, Major General Ahmed Naser al-Raisi - who does not have diplomatic immunity - could be arrested and questioned if he enters French territory, including Lyon, where the international policing body is headquartered.
The complaint was filed on behalf of Matthew Hedges and Ali Issa Ahmad and holds al-Raisi, the general inspector of the UAE’s interior ministry, and six other Emirati officials responsible for the two men’s arrests and abuse while in Emirati prisons.
Hedges, a British academic, was arrested during a doctoral research trip to the UAE in May 2018. He was accused of spying for the British government.
Then aged 31, Hedges was held in solitary confinement, tortured and eventually coerced into signing a false confession. After seven months, he was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in November 2018 after the UAE came under international pressure.
Ahmad, who is from Wolverhampton, travelled to the UAE to watch an Asian Cup football match in January 2019, when he was beaten by plain-clothes police officers and detained.
It is thought that he was arrested for wearing the football shirt of UAE’s arch-rival Qatar, though the UAE has denied this.
Ahmad, now 28, was detained between 23 January and 12 February 2019, during which time he has said he was subjected to racial and psychological abuse and torture, including being beaten, electrocuted, burned and stabbed.
He was also released after heavy international attention and after agreeing to pay a fine for “wasting police time”.