2 weeks Ago
When Heather Cornelius first learned that her husband Ryan had been arrested in Dubai, initially charged with money-laundering after the state bank claimed he had misused a multimillion-dollar loan, she was, she says, 'a complete wreck, crying all the time'. Still, she believed it was a clear mistake that would be sorted soon. As Ryan remained in a high-security desert prison without trial for three years, she tried to focus on raising their three children – the youngest just six – despite being heartbroken about the milestones he was missing.
'I worried about all those times he would never have,' Heather says. 'Watching them grow, seeing their rugby games, all that learning and life. I promised the children every year that, this Christmas, we'd have Dad home – and I always believed it.
' Dubai Marina Heather never imagined that, more than 16 years later, Ryan would still be in prison, the money-laundering charges long dropped, but now serving 20 more years for debt – a criminal matter in Dubai – with a possible release date of 2038. The thoughts that torture her aren't of the children – who are adults now, aged from 22 to 34. All are away, living their lives.
'Ryan is 70. By 2038, he'll be 84,' says Heather. 'Now the biggest fear that keeps me awake at night is that he's going to die in prison.
' Ryan Cornelius was arrested at the height of the 2008 financial crash. In 2022, a United Nations working group ruled that his trial was unfair and his imprisonment 'arbitrary', contravening eight separate articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the UAE is a signatory. The case has also been picked up by the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, founded by Bill Browder, the financier and critic of state-led human rights abuses.
Browder called Cornelius's fate 'a trumped-up case ...
a shakedown to seize his business'.Then, last month, Tim Roca, Labour MP for Macclesfield, tabled a debate on Ryan's detention in the House of Commons. In the early days.
.. Anna Moore.
