'I was jailed in Dubai hellhole and will never forget the smell'

British womanMia O’Brien received alife sentence in recent days after a “very stupid mistake” reportedly landed her inside the notorious Al-Awir prison in Dubai.

The law student, 23, from Huyton in Merseyside, was allegedly caught with cocaine inside her apartment. Another Brit who knows all about the extremity of punishment in Dubai is David Haigh, who spent 22 months jailed in the United Arab Emirates.

After allegedly being hit across the head during the initial investigation, he remembered: “They took me off and I was walking and walking towards what I could smell as a growing kind of nasty smell. Horrible kind of sweaty dirty… we are going through these big double doors.

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“It was just so hot, there was no natural light, dirty, smelly.” He was then told he was staying in the cell until “tomorrow” but David remembered: “Tomorrow turned out to be 22 months later.” The former managing director of Leeds United Football Club spoke about his ordeal with Eddie Mair for BBC Sounds.

He was held in different Dubai detention centres for nearly two years on fraud charges. His former employer, GFH Capital, a Dubai private equity group, accused him of fraud, before he was arrested in May 2014.

David, a lawyer and business executive, strongly denied the charges and since his release he has opened up about the violence and conditions he witnessed in prison.

“Horrific,” he said, when speaking about violence. “Torture is the word to use. And raped as well. I talk a lot about what happened but when I have to talk about the rape it is tough.

“When I look back on it now and I am sat here talking to you, it is like it didn’t happen because it is so extreme what happened to me. Obviously it happened because I have the physical and mental scars to show for it.

“But things like that, you look back and you talk about it, and it is unbelievable for that to happen.”

The businessman also said he witnessed the torture of other inmates. Speaking to BBC Newsnight about a young man from Pakistan, he said: “Three or four policemen were torturing him, standing on his throat, Tasering him, using a cattle prod against him. It was the most shocking thing of my life, and I will never forget it.”

He also claimed 10 people would be crowded inside a room meant for four and that there were “seas of unwashed, unfed people” everywhere you looked.

David also said TB was a huge problem and that he encountered British citizens who contracted the disease in the “disgusting” toilets.

Giving further insight, he added: “There was meant to be two toilets for 32 people and you would often get 100 in there. One of them wasn’t working.”

He then said the word toilet was the wrong description, adding: “It was a hole in the ground. There is no flush, there is no toilet paper, it is just disgusting.”

David, who also said he was Tasered and threatened, claimed he still suffers physically today after officers “smashed up” his knee.

The Brit was eventually released from Dubai prison in March 2016 after he was acquitted on separate charges relating to cyber slander.

The former detainee turned justice campaigner still maintains his innocence regarding the fraud allegations and now has a much different perception of Dubai.

He continued: “You see the towers and it is marketed as this cosmopolitan 21st century city that is for youth and drive and energy and money – and you never imagine what I saw.

“I would see, and there is a picture that will stick in my mind in that hellhole where I spent 15 months, through that little gap where you could see the sky.

“I would see one of the biggest towers there, towering gleaming sky scrapers, and you look down and you see cockroaches and piles of rubbish. And that is one of the enduring images in my mind.”

After his release, a Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman said: “Our embassy staff were in almost daily contact with Mr Haigh throughout his detention, and this included regular checks on his welfare. We also regularly raised his case with UAE authorities, letting them know we were following it closely.

“We take Mr Haigh's allegations of mistreatment extremely seriously and are setting out our concerns to the UAE authorities. We only raise allegations of mistreatment when we have the individual's consent to do so.”