The Foreign Office has apologised to a British academic who had accused the Government for ‘abandoning’ him while he was tortured in the UAE after being falsely accused of spying for the MI6.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has admitted that officials ‘did not fully follow our guidance on torture and mistreatment’ in the case of Matthew Hedges.

Mr Hedges was sentenced to life in jail after being arrested at Dubai airport in May 2018. He was held in UAE custody where he suffered intense interrogations and torture amid accusations he was collecting sensitive information which went ‘far beyond’ academic research.

The Durham University researcher was released after being granted a presidential pardon and returned to the UK in November 2018. 

The apology – which Mr Hedges has hailed as a ‘watershed moment’ – comes after Parliamentary Ombudsman ruled last month that the FCDO failed to protect Mr Hedges, should issue a formal apology and pay him compensation. 

The UAE Government categorically denies torturing Mr Hedges, and said his claims are ‘wholly untrue and without any foundation’. 

The FCDO issued a formal apology to Mr Hedges in a letter on August 31 this year, MailOnline can reveal.  

In the letter the authority accepted the findings of the parliamentary watchdog’s internal review in full and told Mr Hedges that officials ‘recognise the profound impact of your detention in UAE on you and the injustice you have faced’.

The letter reads: ‘On behalf of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, I acknowledge, and apologise for, the failing identified by the Ombudsman, specifically I recognise that we did not fully follow our guidance on torture and mistreatment and that this failure has left you uncertain as to whether more could have been done on your behalf.’

The Ombudsman, which began its probe in 2019, ruled last month that the FCDO did not act in accordance to its own internal guidance when it came to ‘spotting signs of torture when meeting with British detainees’.

The watchdog recommended the FCDO should issue a formal apology to Mr Hedges within three months, as well as pay him £1,500 in compensation. The Ombudsman also advised that the authority review their internal practices.

Mr Hedges – who last month told MailOnline that he ‘felt completely abandoned’ by the British Government and ‘could not believe that they were not able to understand the very clear and obvious signs of my torture’ – said he is ‘delighted’ to have received the apology from the FCDO.

‘It has been a battle to reach this stage. The FCDO’s acknowledgement of the torture and injustice I suffered at the hands of the UAE is a watershed moment, not just for me and my family, but for all British nationals,’ he told MailOnline on Monday. 

‘There is now no doubt that the FCDO failed in their obligations towards one of their citizens and I truly hope that the hundreds of other British nationals who are currently detained and suffering torture will benefit from the FCDO’s promise of reviewing their clearly outdated and insufficient policies.’

However, Mr Hedges claims the apology does not alleviate all of the pain he endured, including the fact that ‘I still have a criminal record for espionage on behalf of the British Government’.

He criticised the Government’s continued relationship with the UAE, saying ‘it is baffling that the UK continues to work alongside the UAE knowing how callous they are with British lives’.

Mr Hedges also called the FCDO to ‘do more to push the UAE to clear my name given that they have this close relationship’. He also acknowledged that the false allegations of espionage were ‘refuted by all levels of the UK Government at the time of my detention’.

Mr Hedges was arrested at Dubai Airport on May 5, 2018, as he was poised to leave the country, having been in the UAE on a two-week research trip for his PhD in security.

He was accused of being an MI6 agent, detained and eventually found guilty on spying offences, before being given an official pardon after a long campaign by his wife Daniela and an intervention from Mr Hunt.

Last month he told MailOnline: ‘The reluctance of the FCDO to protect me – a completely innocent British citizen, within a country that they themselves know commits torture – was one of the most shocking things to deal with during that time.’ 

The academic has always fiercely denied being involved with any spying agency and the UK government has previously confirmed it did not see any evidence which supported the state’s claims.

During his detention, Mr Hedges was kept in a windowless cell, and for the first few months was forced to sleep on the floor with the lights constantly switched on.

Mr Hedges also previously revealed that he was forced to take a cocktail of drugs that doctors were made to prescribe for him, was constantly watched and repeatedly interrogated.

While in confinement, he suffered from anxiety and panic and was unable to sleep. After being sentenced to life in prison, he attempted to take his own life.

But he was granted clemency in November 2018 and returned to the UK shortly afterwards. 

He submitted his complaint to the Ombudsman in September 2019 and the watchdog last month ruled the FCDO failed to protect him. 

The watchdog said embassy staff who visited Mr Hedges while he was in detention noticed his voice was shaking, he avoided eye contact and mentioned having anxiety attacks.

It added these were signs he might have been subject to torture or mistreatment, and that Foreign Office guidelines say that staff should have acted in response even when they do not have consent.

The Ombudsman recommended the authority not only apologise and pay compensation, but also ‘say what it will do to ensure its handling of similar circumstances is consistent with relevant guidance’.

Mr Hedges has now said it is a ‘real shame’ that the ‘long-awaited apology’ only came in response to the parliamentary watchdog’s investigation.

‘I would have hoped that the FCDO would take the initiative to learn from their own mistakes without needing an oversight body to force them to do so,’ the academic told MailOnline on Monday. 

‘I cannot overstate how fundamental it is that the FCDO improves its procedures for protecting British citizens that are detained abroad, especially for those like Jaghtar Singh Johal in India, and Alaa Abd El-Fattah in Egypt, who like me, have suffered torture at the hands of the authorities holding them – also British allies.’

Mr Hedges said he will ‘continue to fight for those who are not lucky enough to have been freed’ and for those who have ‘ridiculous false charges made against them’.

He added: ‘And today I revel in the fact that the FCDO have agreed they must do more to protect and help British citizens.’

His vow to continue advocating for other alleged victims of torture, echoes remarks he made last month.

Last month, responding to the Ombudsman’s findings, Mr Hedges said he wants to do everything in his power to warn other British nationals about the dangers of travelling to the UAE, adding ‘there are serious limits to what the FCDO will actually do to help and protect you’.

He told MailOnline at the time: ‘Nothing will ever make up for what I went through, but it feels like a semblance of justice to know that the behaviour of the Foreign Office was unacceptable and to have their failure to protect recognised.’

‘The Foreign Office doesn’t tell you it’s unsafe, but people aren’t educated that this is a country that is known to do this.

‘The FCDO knows the UAE tortures and abuses people, it’s in the report. They know this occurs and they act as if there’s no issue.

‘This is when the anger starts to rise’, he said of individuals he is currently pursuing legal action against. ‘They act as if nothing happened and if something did happen they are disregarding it.

‘They are cosying up to the people involved in this, it questions their morality. I’m not here to say never contact these people. But they saw this torture occur and their acting as if nothing happened.’ 

Mr Hedges added that he was not angry with the FCDO as a whole, but instead with ‘individuals in the Foreign Office’ who he feels failed to protect him.

Last month, a statement from the UAE government said Mr Hedges was convicted of espionage following a ‘fair and transparent trial at which he admitted the charges against him’.

The UAE government said it provided Mr Hedges with ‘entirely proper care and treatment’.

‘He was never subjected to, or threatened with, either torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of any sort. The UAE has evidence to support this,’ the statement read.

‘Allegations by Mr Hedges of mistreatment are categorically false and lack evidentiary basis. His claims of being “tortured” while in UAE custody are wholly untrue and without any foundation whatsoever.

It added: ‘None of Mr Hedges’ claims have ever been accepted by any court, government, or international body.’

MailOnline has approached the Foreign Office for comment. 

Reserve Bank boss cops a subtle dig at his academic credentials – as his misleading advice that interest rates would not rise until 2024 is slammed

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By Stephen Johnson, Economics Reporter For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 22:07 EDT, 22 December 2022 | Updated: 22:42 EDT, 22 December 2022

FOOD

ROMAINE WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY 

by Judith Tschann (Headline £18.99, 240pp)

Stand by for a tsunami of lettuce-based puns as American academic Judith Tschann explores the often bizarre etymology of various foods.

Actually, her book, subtitled ‘The Delightful History Of Food Language’, contains no other lettuce-based puns at all, which was a great disappointment: the only one, indeed, of this splendid book. Did you know, for instance, that the word ‘avocado’ comes from ahuacatl in the Nahuatl language, spoken in southern Mexico and central America? And as well as referring to the fruit, ahuacatl can mean ‘testicle’, and no one is quite sure which meaning came first. Was an avocado named after a testicle or a testicle after an avocado?

Moving on swiftly, we establish that ‘apple’ also has two distinct meanings. One is the ’round fruit with crisp flesh’ we are all familiar with, and the other is the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

The actual fruit they ate was not named in Genesis, but some Jewish commentators on the Torah think it was the fig, and Michelangelo made it fig-like on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

In the 13th century a translator of the Spanish-Jewish philosopher Maimonides said it was a banana, and early Christian theologians writing in Latin opted for an apple.

This actually gave them an opportunity for a Latin pun: the Latin word for apple is malum, with a long ‘a’, while malum with a short ‘a’ means ‘evil’. Think on that as you nibble your organic Pink Lady.

The word banana, meanwhile, came into English via Portuguese or Spanish from Wolof, an Atlantic-Congo language, or possibly Mande, a branch of the Niger-Congo family of languages. The fruit’s botanical name is Musa sapientum, meaning ‘fruit of the old wise men’, and as I still eat them in terrifying quantities, I shall take that as a compliment. To ‘go bananas’ is, obviously, to go mad, whereas ‘top banana’, alluding to someone important, originally meant ‘the top comedian in a vaudeville show’.

‘Probably because of a skit involving a banana’, says Tschann, stretching the gag a little.

Orange, of course, is one of the few words in the language that has no precise rhyme. (Silver is another.) It also comes to us, via Arabic and French, from the Persian word narang, and somewhere along the line it lost that initial ‘n’. Tschann asks, ‘Did the colour orange exist for English speakers before the fruit came into their lives?’ Whether it did or not, she notes that the word ‘orange’ describing the colour only appeared about 100 years after English speakers had been eating and talking about the fruit.

And why is a certain rude noise called a ‘raspberry’? Apparently this is our old friend Cockney rhyming slang, which decided that ‘raspberry tart’ was a much more polite way of saying ‘fart’.

And this is just the section on fruit!

French fries come not from France, but from Belgium. They’re called French because another meaning of that word is ‘sliced lengthwise in strips’. Ketchup comes fom a Chinese word for ‘briny fish sauce’.

At one point, Tschann gives a useful list of meanings for various pasta shapes. I knew that farfalle meant either ‘butterflies’ or ‘bow-ties’, but if you ever eat strozzapreti, that word means ‘priest-stranglers’.

Vermicelli are ‘little worms’ (yuk), but did you know that ziti, a type of macaroni, are ‘newlyweds’? It comes from maccheroni della zita, literally ‘macaroni of the bride’.

At some point the word mutated to ziti, a masculine plural word, so presumably the groom was allowed to eat them, too.

A Bloody Mary — vodka and seasoned tomato juice — is named after Mary I of England, nicknamed Bloody Mary for her tendency to have dissenters to her Catholic doctrine executed. But the earliest recorded date of Bloody Mary as a name for a cocktail wasn’t until 1939, when the New York Herald Tribune called it a ‘new pick-me-up’.

No one knows who the original Harvey Wallbanger was — or even whether he existed at all — but a more recent cocktail, the Terremoto, from the Spanish word for earthquake, was named after the 1985 Chilean earthquake.

It’s made with white wine, pineapple ice cream and grenadine. If you order a second one of these cocktails — something I personally find almost impossible to imagine — it’s called an aftershock.

Did you know that the correct name for a brandy glass was a ‘snifter’? No, neither did I.

This fine and amusingly written book is full of these wonderful gobbets of information, all strung together with Tschann’s nimble and droll prose.

Anyone who eats food and/or likes words will gain hours of innocent pleasure from this veritable feast of fun.