Foreign Office failed to notice torture of British academic in UAE, watchdog finds

Matthew Hedges with his wife, Daniela Tejada, who said that when she raised concerns with the Foreign Office about torture, ‘I was completely dismissed’. Photograph: Daniela Tejada/EPA

The UK’s parliamentary ombudsman has found that the Foreign Office “failed to notice signs of torture” when officials visited a British academic imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates.

Matthew Hedges was convicted on spying charges by the UAE in 2018 after travelling to Dubai to conduct research for his PhD at Durham University. He spent six months in prison, where he has said he had been handcuffed, drugged and questioned for hours, before being pardoned from a life sentence for spying.