UK – Daily Mail, Nov. 30, 2025
Pressure is mounting on the Labour Government to call for the release of two British businessmen ‘forgotten’ for 17 years in a UAE jail.
Two leading human rights lawyers have written to Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper calling on her to personally intervene in the cases of Ryan Cornelius, 71, and Charles Ridley 66, who have been languishing in a Dubai prison since 2008.
The pair were convicted of fraud concerning the alleged misuse of a $501m (£370m) loan provided by the Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB).
In their letter, Rhys Davies KC and Ben Keith KC say the ‘unlawful’ detention of the two Britons after their conviction in a ‘kangaroo court’, ‘is likely to continue unless the United Kingdom Government takes action’.
Before their arrest, the two men had agreed to a settlement scheme, in which they had begun to pay back the money before they were detained and convicted.
Rhys Davies told the Mail on Sunday that the pair’s plight – which has seen both men since retroactively sentenced to another 20 years, under a law introduced after their original conviction – is ‘totally antithetical to the rule of law – a total stitch up’.
The detention of both Britons has been ruled unlawful by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
