UAE-Britain spy case ridiculous, comical: Analyst
A political analyst from London says the way the United Arab Emirates handled the case of a British spy was a real farce which showed how dependent and undecided the small Persian Gulf Arab state was in dealing with its own sovereignty and security.
Massoud Shadjareh, who chairs the UK-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, said in an interview with Press TV on Monday that Abu Dhabi’s decision earlier in the day to release Mathew Hedges, a young doctoral student convicted of espionage, was shocking considering that he had been jailed for life just a week ago.
“This is so astonishing what has taken place, (it) really is so ridiculous this whole story from the beginning of it,” said Shadjareh.
The expert said it has always been a practice for the UAE to give British intelligence services a “total open door” to go to the country and “do whatever they want.”
He said it was not clear why London had to go through a “backdoor” this time and send an academic for spying on the country’s military purchases.
Shadjareh said the UAE caused real anger in London by jailing Hedges for life over espionage convictions as no one in the British government had thought that the small emirates would dare doing such a thing.
“Who the hell is this (Persian) Gulf state sort of behaving in this way towards our citizens,” he said of the Britain’s way of seeing the case, adding that British authorities had believed that arresting Hedges back in May and taking him to court to face espionage charges was merely a “formality.”
The analyst said the UAE’s handing down of a life term to Hedges and then releasing him just a few days later, which he called a “180-degrees change in the policy”, again was a sign of the farcical nature of the case.
“It’s really totally ridiculous, I think this whole story from the beginning was so comical that you couldn’t really write comedy like this,” said Shadjareh.
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