A British businessman who built a fortune in Dubai has described being beaten and tortured after attempting to flee the UAE over a debt dispute. Albert Douglas, 58, was captured by soldiers while trying to cross the border into Oman in February 2021, after a court case over debts incurred by his son's company left him facing a £2.5m fine and three-year prison sentence.
Douglas, who had lived on the Palm Jumeirah and driven a Rolls-Royce, was forced to abandon his home and go into hiding. He hired people smugglers to take him to the UAE-Omani border, but as he approached a hole cut in the four-metre barbed-wire fence, soldiers surrounded him. 'Red dots peppered Albert's body – laser sights from the weapons of UAE soldiers,' the report states. A hood was pulled over his head.
He was taken to a dark, dirty cell, where he says he was stripped, slapped, deprived of sleep and interrogated over several days. 'I wasn't withholding information. I didn't have the answer. So I was beaten and I was tortured,' he said. Later, at Al Ain central prison, three guards entered his cell and kicked his head 'like a football', leaving him unconscious with a badly broken shoulder. 'You just assume it's going to stop. It doesn't stop, but you just think it's gonna stop, and, basically, thereon after, you think you're gonna die,' he recalled.
His son Wolfgang, in London, initially feared his father had been killed, organising searches along the border for a body. After about 10 days, Albert managed to call him, saying: 'Son, I am not OK.' The case highlights the risks faced by expats in the UAE, where the UK government is often accused of offering little help to those detained.
