Theresa May needs to reassess Britain’s relationship with the UAE – Matthew Hedges’ freedom depends on it

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Prime Minister Theresa May says she’s “deeply disappointed” by the life sentence a United Arab Emirates (UAE) court has just handed to British academic Matthew Hedges.

Hedges was given a life sentence for spying by a court in Abu Dhabi during a trial that lasted less than five minutes, during which Hedges had no access to a lawyer.

May has vowed to raise his case at the “highest level”.

Perhaps she will tackle the UAE regime at the next Defence and Security Equipment International arms fair where UK weapons manufacturers, helped by the British government, sell their wares to any despot with an open cheque book.

British arms sales to repressive regimes in the Middle East have soared to £5bn since the 2017 election.

The UAE is the second largest importer of weapons in the Middle East and was listed as the world’s third largest importer of weapons between 2012 and 2016. The sale of UK cyber surveillance technology and weapons to the UAE leaped by 94 per cent in 2017. And according to Department for International Trade figures, UK military sales to Saudi Arabia increased by two-thirds in 2017 year on year, with the UK issuing 126 export licences, relating to military goods, to Saudi Arabia with a value of £1.129bn.

Both Saudi Arabia and UAE are using the weapons sold to them by the UK on the people of Yemen.

Charity Save the Children estimates 84,701 children have died since a Saudi Arabian-led coalition began its war on Yemen in 2015.

The UN say more than 1.3 million Yemeni children have been affected by severe malnutrition since the conflict began, and 14 million people now face famine there.

This is of little interest to May, who has played a very active role in promoting UK arms sales to the Gulf states.

In 2017 she insisted that: “Gulf security is our security and Gulf prosperity is our prosperity”.

No doubt May sees the children of Yemen – and Matthew Hedges’ incarceration – as an irrelevance that mustn’t be allowed to stand in the way of “our prosperity”.

Sasha Simic
London N16

Durham University is at fault for allowing PhD student Matthew Hedges to put himself in harm’s way by going to the UAE in search of sensitive information on the effect of the Arab Spring on its security and foreign policy.

It’s widely known the UAE took the Arab Spring extremely seriously and prosecuted en masse 94 government critics who called for reform. It beggars belief he thought he could interview with impunity senior figures about state security.

The first requirement for an academic undertaking research in the UAE is surely fluency in Arabic. It might have stopped him signing a confession in Arabic that he had knowingly jeopardised the state’s “military, political and economic security”.

Rev Dr John Cameron
St Andrews

Anne Hegerty and bush tucker trials

Much as I appreciate the sympathetic feelings expressed towards Anne Hegerty and her courage in I’m a Celebrity, I am still appalled by the callous cruelty of the public who voted for her as a candidate for a trial in the programme.

Christine Oram
Hove

Out-of-hospital care is more crucial than ever

I’m writing in response to your article titled “Theresa May’s £3.5bn for out-of-hospital care revolution not enough to deliver significant changes, experts warn”. The important role rapid response teams play in helping to reduce emergency admissions to hospital isn’t news to us.

At Marie Curie, we provide hands-on nursing care for people living with a terminal illness, and already work closely with other local providers to effectively operate rapid response teams in the UK.

The availability of this service means patients and their families are able to access information and advice over the phone, and urgent hands-on care in their homes, any day of the week.

Working as a clinical nurse manager for the charity, I see every day how our service helps prevent people being unnecessarily rushed to hospital, which can be a very traumatic experience for everyone involved. We can already see increasing need for our service in the community and know that the demand for such services will continue to rise.

We know that people who had care from the Marie Curie nursing service in the community were three times less likely to have an emergency admission, so they could spend their final days in their own home surrounded by their loved ones. Making end-of-life care in the community a greater priority would ensure that more people can die where they want to, which for most is not the hospital.”

Jayne Unwin, clinical nurse manager at Marie Curie
Address supplied

Leave Theresa May alone

Some of your correspondents are being a mite overcritical of Theresa May. She has in fact performed a great public service by demonstrating conclusively that the best deal she could negotiate is infinitely inferior to remaining in the European Union. The interesting question, for historians and psychologists, is whether she did this intentionally or by accident.

Philip Goldenberg
Woking

Spain is forgetting its own territorial history

I see that, once again, Spain is bringing its territorial dispute with the UK over Gibraltar as a reason for its proposed “veto”. Why is it that Spain’s territory in Morocco, Ceuta, is rarely acknowledged? There’s also no mention made of Melilla, the disputed Spanish town of Olivenza on a disputed section of the border with Portugal, or the Spanish exclave of Livia. Is there not some hypocrisy here from the Spanish government?

Brian Donnellan
Huddersfield

A second referendum is anything but undemocratic

I keep hearing the argument against having a second referendum, citing it to be undemocratic and often sarcastically questioning whether it would lead to a “best of three” contest. I would argue we are in an unlimited contest.

Democracy did not end after the first vote. We shouldn’t even be thinking of this as a second referendum.

It would be a completely separate referendum, based on a whole different set of facts and considerations for the voter, which were nowhere near the table last time around. After we have this mess sorted out, we could then move onto more “second referendums”. Fox hunting, anyone?

Marc Cutworth
Cambridgeshire

Britain’s greatness ended a long time ago

I regret that a substantial minority of the entire British public are willing to swim against the tides of history, seeking to divorce the UK from mainland Europe.

Britain was “great” in 1908 when the sun never set on our empire, when our Royal Navy ruled the waves, when British coal supplied energy running much of the northern hemisphere, and when our fortress island homeland could not be destroyed by a few intercontinental nuclear missiles.

110 years later, there are too many fools in British politics who cannot accept that such “greatness” is now forever gone. Their wishful thinking cannot restore it.

Ted Batty
Selby, Yorkshire