The plight of Matthew Hedges, the British academic currently imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates jail, echoes my own horrific experience of the country’s judicial process.

My ordeal began in April 2013 with a phone call instructing me to report to a local police station to address a “small problem”.

Over the next nine months I met many others who were being arbitrarily detained, including many who had been transferred from secret prisons who told me of the systematic torture to which they had been subjected.

Like Matthew, I’d spent my childhood in Dubai and returned to work there after graduating from university in America.

Then one day I was arrested for reasons I was unaware of and I was…

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