Read the daily news to learn English

US rescues second crew member of downed F-15E fighter jet from Iran

The second crew member of a downed F-15E fighter jet has been rescued by US commandos overnight, ending a dramatic two-day search after the warplane crashed in south-west Iran. The crew member, a colonel and weapons systems officer, had sustained some injuries but was successfully extracted by US special forces, Donald Trump said in a social media post soon after midnight EST. The US president called the operation to recover the air man “one of most daring search-and-rescue operations in US history” – and claimed that not a “single American” had been killed or wounded in the operation. On Sunday morning, Trump added further details, describing the F-15 crew member as “seriously wounded, and really brave”. The officer was a “highly respected Colonel” who had been picked up in the “type of raid is seldom attempted because of the danger to ‘man and equipment’”. Initial reports indicated that once located hiding in the mountains, having at one point climbed a 7,000-foot ridge, the colonel was rescued by a special forces team under a hail of heavy covering fire. Three Islamic Revolutionary Guards were killed, according to Iranian sources. Iran’s military said on Sunday that it had destroyed three US aircraft involved in the search operation and that the Americans had used an abandoned airport in southern Isfahan as a base. State media shared images of charred wreckage scattered across a desert area, with smoke still emanating from the site. At least one $115m Hercules had to be destroyed in Iran because it had run into difficulties, having become bogged down in the ground, according to US media. Extra transport planes had to be flown in to complete the extraction. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, highlighted the cost of the lost aircraft with an apparent photograph of the wreckage: “If the United States gets three more victories like this, it will be utterly ruined.” Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated Trump. The Israeli prime minister said: “As a nation that repeatedly carried out daring rescue operations, and as someone who was wounded in such a mission and lost a brother in the Entebbe rescue, Israelis and I, we know what a bold decision you took.” Footage emerged of what was said to be night-time clashes in Iran’s Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, near the city of Dehdasht, about 30 miles from the coast in the south-west of the country, the area where US searches had been taking place. The pilot of the aircraft had been rescued on Friday, after the F-15E Strike Eagle became the first US plane to be downed over Iran during the five-week-long war. On Sunday, Trump said the pilot had been rescued “in broad daylight” having spent seven hours on the ground in Iran. The US air force had launched a massive search-and-rescue effort, using low-flying Pave Hawk helicopters and specialist C-130 Hercules transport planes. The CIA took more than a day to locate the missing air man, according to a report in Axios, and launched a disinformation campaign in Iran to give the impression that he had been found in order to fool Iranian forces on the ground. Uncrewed Reaper drones were used to protect the crew member once he had been located, by “striking Iranian military-aged males believed to be a threat who got within three kilometers” according to a correspondent with the US Air & Space Forces Magazine, who said he had been briefed on the operation. Military pilots said the missing F-15 crew member would have been trying to hide for as long as possible from the Iranian military. If possible, the colonel would have tried to transmit their location relative to a known secret point in the hope that US special forces coming in via helicopter would be able to rescue them. It was not clear exactly how the F-15 was downed, although Iran said it had shot it down. The US military did not publicly comment. Trump said on Friday that the episode would not affect efforts to negotiate a peace settlement with Iran. The US military had not had a jet shot down by enemy fire in more than 20 years – since a warplane was downed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq – retired air force Brig Gen Houston Cantwell told the Associated Press. Iranian media released pictures of the wreckage of a plane, including a distinctive F-15 tail fin, and a used ejector seat on Friday, with state media and businesses in the country offering a bounty if the missing crew member could be captured. It also emerged that a Pave Hawk helicopter was hit by fire from the ground during the rescue of the pilot on Friday, but was able to fly away. Another combat plane, an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft, crashed near the strait of Hormuz with Iran claiming it had shot it down. Its pilot was rescued. The loss of the F-15 and other aircraft had come as a relative surprise, given the air superiority the US and Israel have established over Iran from the beginning of the five-week-long war. But it demonstrated that after thousands of bombing missions, Iran still has the capacity to inflict high-profile damage on the US. Trump said the US would never leave an American warfighter behind, committing the country’s military to similar rescue efforts if any more planes are brought down. Meanwhile, heavy bombing of Iran continued. Israel attacked several facilities at Mahshahr, a petrochemical complex in Khuzestan province, on Saturday, and on Sunday Iranian officials said that production there had been shut down. A building close to Iran’s civil Bushehr nuclear power plant was struck on Saturday morning, killing a guard, Iran said. Later, the IAEA atomic energy watchdog said it had been informed by Iran of the incident, the fourth in recent weeks, and added “no increase in radiation levels was reported”. Israel also attacked Lebanon, having issued a warning that people should evacuate at least 300 metres away from a building in southern Beirut that it said was affiliated with Hezbollah. Seven people were recorded as killed in a strike on Kfar Hatta, 30 miles north of the border with Israel. A fire broke out at the Borouge petrochemical plant in the UAE after falling debris from a missile interception caused a blaze, prompting operations at the facility to be suspended. A fire was extinguished at a storage tank belonging to Bahrain’s state energy company, the company said on Sunday.

Middle East crisis live: Trump uses expletive-ridden social media post to threaten Iran’s infrastructure

In a follow-up post on Truth Social, Trump has used abusive language to call on Iran to let ships through the Strait of Hormuz, and threatened to further attack Iranian energy and transport infrastructure. He said: Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Mexican art world protests over plan to send Frida Kahlo masterpieces to Spain

One of the world’s most important collections of 20th-century Mexican art, including works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is set to be exported to Spain under an agreement with Banco Santander, sparking outrage among Mexico’s cultural community. Nearly 400 cultural professionals have signed an open letter calling on the Mexican government to offer greater clarity on what the deal means for the masterpieces, particularly the works by Kahlo, which the Mexican state has declared an “artistic monument”. “It’s a very serious issue,” said Francisco Berzunza, a historian and one of eight people who published the open letter. “She [Kahlo] is the most important artist in the history of our country and it’s easier to see her work outside of Mexico than in Mexico itself.” The row centres on a collection of 160 works from the Gelman collection, rebranded as the Gelman Santander collection. Originally owned by the collectors Jacques and Natasha Gelman, the paintings, sketches and photographs were bought by the Mexican Zambrano family in 2023. As well as Kahlo and Rivera, the collection includes works by Rufino Tamayo, José Clemente Orozco, María Izquierdo, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and a selection of Mexican photography. Under the Santander deal, the collection, currently on public display in Mexico for the first time in nearly 20 years, will return to Spain this summer where it will become a cornerstone of the bank’s new cultural centre, the Faro Santander. In announcing the agreement in January, Santander said it would be “responsible for the conservation, research and exhibition” of the collection. But the ambiguity of the announcement, which did not say how long the works would remain in Spain, sparked concern. The concern turned to indignation when Faro Santander’s director, Daniel Vega Pérez de Arlucea, told El País that legislation governing the works was “flexible” and that the collection would have a “permanent presence” at the new cultural centre. Members of Mexico’s cultural community fear the deal means the works may never return to Mexico and say the law is unambiguous when it comes to these national treasures. Gabriela Mosqueda, a curator and another one of the letter’s initial signatories, said: “Current legislation is very protective of these works, specifically those designated as national artistic monuments. It deems them to be of significant value to Mexican identity and to the history of Mexican art.” The dispute is particularly pertinent to Kahlo’s works, which received the “artistic monument” status in 1984: the presidential decree states clearly that her oeuvre may leave Mexico only temporarily and that the country’s National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (Inbal) is responsible for “repatriating” any works held in private collections overseas. Artists, curators and others in Mexico’s cultural scene say that with the Santander deal, Inbal, which owns only four of Kahlo’s 150 or so pieces, has done just the opposite. Berzunza said: “This decree was specifically intended to put a lock on private collections. To ensure they would not leave the country or be dispersed. That’s why we’re defending it so vigorously.” In response to the uproar, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum said: “Our desire is for [the collection] to remain in Mexico.” The minister of culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, said: “The collection is Mexican; it wasn’t sold – it’s only leaving temporarily.” She said the artworks would return to Mexico in 2028. Santander issued a statement emphasising that the deal “does not imply, under any circumstances, either the acquisition of the collection or its permanent removal from Mexico” and that the works “will return to Mexico at the end of the temporary export period”. But cultural figures in Mexico remain up in arms. They say the deal signed between Inbal and Santander is ambiguous and overly favourable to the Spanish bank. The contract between the two institutions, seen by the Guardian, states that although the export is “temporary”, Faro Santander will have charge over the collection “at any point” between June 2026 and 30 September 2030, “a term that may be extended by mutual agreement through the extension of the present contract”. Berzunza said: “If the works were not to return, a fundamental part of this artist’s body of work – and her history – would be lost. She is, after all, the most important female Mexican artist in history. These pieces are fundamental to telling her story, and they are fundamental to understanding our identity as Mexicans.”

How Paris swapped cars for bikes – and transformed its streets

When Corentin Roudaut moved to Paris 10 years ago, he was too scared to cycle. The IT developer had biked everywhere as a student in Rennes but felt overwhelmed by the bustling French capital. Cars were everywhere. Cyclists had almost no protection. But once authorities carved out space for a segregated bike lane on Boulevard Voltaire near his home in the 11th arrondissement, Roudaut returned to the two-wheel commute and did not look back. He now volunteers with Paris en Selle, a cycling campaign group, and has watched with wonder as the city has shaken off its car-centric reputation. “It was a process that started slow and really accelerated in the last 10 years,” Roudaut said. “At least in some parts of the city, we have a [cycle] network that is starting to be safe and pretty much complete.” Paris has embarked on a grand transformation since Anne Hidalgo became mayor in 2014, planting 155,000 trees, adding several hundred kilometres of bike lanes, pedestrianising 300 school streets and banning cars from the banks of the Seine. Parking spots have been turned into green spaces and terraces for cafes and bars. Fewer parents have to fear their child being run over when they walk to school. Now, as Hidalgo leaves office on Sunday after 12 years as mayor, her fight to make the city more livable has been held up as an example for progressive European cities as national governments roll back green policies. “When people ask me if I have any advice, I say don’t be afraid of being ambitious,” said Roudaut, who last year welcomed a delegation of Green politicians from Germany trying to understand why Paris was doing what Berlin could not. Even though Hidalgo achieved only part of her plan, he added, “everybody’s saying: ‘Look at what Paris has done, it’s so amazing.’” Parisians do not all feel the same. Efforts to make streets safer have taken space away from cars, sparking direct opposition from motorists, while referendums on charging SUV drivers more to park and pedestrianising more school streets were won with troublingly low turnouts. Before last month’s municipal elections, Rachida Dati, the mayoral candidate for the rightwing Les Républicains, criticised the chaos in public space as “anxiety-inducing”, though she stopped short of proposing to undo central policies. In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian last week, Hidalgo said pedestrianising the city’s riverbanks had been “a tough battle” but now that it had happened people did not want to go back. “Today there are generations of children who have not known cars there. People say ‘wow!’ when you tell them,” she said. Experts say the transition was made easier by the city’s unusually tight administrative boundaries, which give commuter suburbs less say over its transport than in other capitals, as well as groundwork laid by previous mayors. But still courage was needed to push through policies that inconvenienced motorists while introducing shared social and environmental benefits. More could still be done but the changes so far are “fabulous”, said Audrey de Nazelle, an environmental epidemiologist at Imperial College London who grew up in Paris and returns frequently. She remembers when cycling was so rare “you could go and have coffee together” if you ran into someone else on a bike. “What’s missing in the rest of the world is courage,” she said. “Mayors could say: ‘This is my opportunity [to leave a] legacy,’ but most will not dare.” Paris is one of 19 global cities that achieved remarkable reductions in two toxic air pollutants between 2010 and 2024, a report last month found, although the list also includes a handful of neighbouring capitals with less progressive urban politics. Fine-particle pollution fell faster in Brussels and Warsaw over the same period, while nitrogen dioxide fell faster in London. Berlin, which last year opened a new stretch of motorway inside the city and voted to scrap 30km/h speed limits on 23 main streets, still has a higher share of cyclists than Paris. Rather than being exceptional, Paris has caught up with many other cities from a lower starting point, said Giulio Mattioli, a transport researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, who used to live in Paris. “The conditions were there already, you just needed to make some bike lanes and people would use them,” he said. Cities across Europe saw a boom in cycling and bike-friendly infrastructure during the Covid-19 pandemic but have suffered setbacks amid a political shift to the right and the emergence of conspiracy theories that have unexpectedly taken aim at ideas such as having amenities within walking distance. While Paris proper has undergone a radical shift to becoming a “15-minute city”, the extensive suburbs are still dominated by cars and are cut off by a busy ring road. Analysis for the thinktank Terra Nova by Jean-Louis Missika, a former deputy mayor who served under Hidalgo and her predecessor, said transforming the Boulevard Périphérique that surrounds the city was essential to making Paris a post-car metropolis. “As long as this 35km motorway continues to encircle Paris, the Greater Paris metropolis will remain a figment of the imagination, an administrative construct devoid of urban reality,” he wrote. “Because a metropolis cannot be built by erecting walls between its inhabitants.”

How a mother turned her drowned daughter’s passion into a thriving patisserie

Johanna Orth was a fun-loving, determined little girl and later a purpose-driven young woman who revelled in making a creative mess in the kitchen. Her parents, Inka and Ralph, chuckle quietly as they remember the stacks of batter-covered bowls, spatulas and whisks repeatedly left in the sink. With time, Johanna’s cakes and pastries grew more sophisticated and elaborate, guided by her grandmother, Marlies, who was also a talented baker. Marlies’ own ambition of opening a cafe one day had been thwarted by the demands of motherhood and postwar Germany’s rigid gender roles. Johanna inherited the dream and worked hard to make it a reality, completing the rigorous training to become a certified master patissière who could hold her own with the rarefied global cadre of magicians of the sweet. In 2021, aged 22, she was completing her business school training before opening her own shop named for Marlies when a freak summer deluge bore down on her home town of Bad Neuenahr, in western Germany’s Ahr valley. The river’s water levels peaked at nearly 10 metres, roughly twice those recorded during the previous record flood five years before. On the night of 14-15 July, a panicked Johanna called her parents on holiday in Spain as the waters rushed into her ground-floor flat. As she told them her furniture was beginning to float around her sitting room, the line went dead. Their daughter’s body was found two days later in a parking garage, her slight frame probably carried away by the current when she tried to escape via her terrace door. She was among more than 220 people who perished across Europe in the disaster. “That was the unspeakable night we’ll never forget, which took our beloved daughter away from us,” Inka said. The Orths share a blinding grief that they say only other parents who have lost a child can comprehend. The residence for senior citizens that they ran was destroyed in the flood, their sense of meaning and even will to live washed away with the raging river. For 10 weeks, Inka retreated inside their home in agony and avoided contact with neighbours, who would sometimes cross the street to avoid them and their crushing loss. Then one morning, she woke up with her first glimmer of hope since her daughter’s death. “I wanted to understand what drove her passion,” said Inka. She started looking for a pastry academy that would enrol an amateur in her late 50s and finally found one in the university city of Ulm. After enjoying one confectionery class, she signed up for another 15 courses. While Ralph threw himself into his work back home trying to revive their business, Inka struggled at first with the delicate arts of pulling sugar, laminating doughs and conching chocolate. “I had tears in my eyes because nothing was working,” she said. “And then I thought: ‘Johanna, help me – give me a hand.’” At a workshop on gelatines – “very dry”, Inka remembers – she met a talented fellow student, Marcel Reinhardt, who was just half a year younger than Johanna. They formed an instant bond and when Inka eventually told him about the loss of her daughter, he didn’t recoil at her pain. She had found her future business partner for what would become Patisserie Johanna. Ralph, a soft-spoken man with a knack for sales, recalls the birth of his wife’s idea for a new venture as something that quickly gave them both a sense of shared purpose, a point on the horizon to strive for. The 62-year-old notes how much strain the death of a child puts on the parents’ relationship, with each locked in their own struggle for survival. But he said their project became something that shored up and even strengthened their marriage. “Parents losing a child goes so completely against the natural order that we no longer had any desire to live,” Ralph said. Their connection to their grown son Max and his family and the prospect of a Patisserie Johanna pulled them back from the brink. The couple decided to seek a spot far from the still flood-ravaged Ahr valley and settled on Hamburg, one of their favourite cities, with a vibrant urban centre and teeming tourist industry that could sustain a high-end cake shop and cafe. Their search for the right location turned up a 700 sq metre space in the Unesco-listed warehouse district – a cavernous 19th-century cocoa storage facility made of elegant red brick. “It was perfect,” said Inka. Since opening in February 2024, the business has continued to grow, with an expanding team in the open on-site kitchen, Ralph said. They now employ about 30 staff. On a bustling afternoon before Easter, the seasonal pastries, chocolates and gateaux were arrayed in glass display cases, spotlit like jewels. Certificates from multiple German Chocolate Awards line the entrance, where a short red carpet welcomes customers. And Johanna, of course, is everywhere. Large portraits of the striking, chestnut-haired woman with kind eyes hang on the walls. Inka and Ralph used a butterfly – a symbol they associate with their daughter’s enduring presence – as the shop’s logo. Filigree wings adorn many of the petit fours, including a special edition they offer each 1 June, Johanna’s birthday. Their daughter’s best friend, Franzi, helped with their online marketing and now oversees the business’s social media presence from the store. And a lifesize bronze sculpture depicts Johanna seated with one of her beloved cats, who also died in the flood, under one hand, a chocolate praline in the other. The Orths say the shop has become something of a pilgrimage site for parents who have lost children. When they meet other grieving couples, the initial communication is often wordless. Some reach for a hug as soon as they see them. “That is fine,” Ralph said, tears welling in his eyes. The couple recall an elderly woman last year who, having read about the shop, told them she took the train from Berlin just to deposit a single white rose on the statue in Johanna’s memory. “I still get goose pimples when I think of it – it was indescribable,” Inka said. Ralph has become an “informal” representative of the families who lost loved ones in the Ahr valley flood, and has campaigned for the political officials who failed to order an emergency evacuation to be brought to justice. Their legal action is still pending. The Orths commute the 300 miles (500km) back to Bad Neuenahr most weeks to see family and visit Johanna’s grave. But they said Hamburg, which experienced its own flood catastrophe in 1962, had done a better job of learning from the disaster than their home region. With climate change increasing the frequency and severity of flooding, Ralph said he was angry more German urban areas were not adopting best practice when it came to measures such as early-warning systems. “It’s like everyone wants to reinvent the wheel instead of looking at where things work well.” The couple never speak of “moving on”. The constant reminders of their daughter ground them and help mitigate her wrenching absence. The shop, meanwhile, is firmly centred around community and life’s great pleasures. “This is not the patisserie of mourning,” Inka said. “For us it’s, of course, the highest compliment when people leave here happy.”

A strategy ‘to make life intolerable’: Israeli settlers are driving Christians out of West Bank

Taybeh, a small hilltop town in the heart of the West Bank is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. After increasing attacks from Israeli settlers it now feels itself under siege and is fighting for its very existence. The town’s ancient Greek name was Ephraim where, according to the gospels, Jesus hid with his disciples from the Jewish religious hierarchy, the Sanhedrin, before making his final fateful trip to Jerusalem. A church was built here in the fifth century, and the entirely Christian community survived the crusaders, conquest by Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub or Saladin, the Ottoman empire, the British empire, and three Arab-Israeli wars, but its inhabitants say its long-term future is in question. There are four substantial Israeli settlements around Taybeh, and countless unofficial outposts have also sprung up on the steep hills overlooking the Jordan valley. They have been set up by messianic Jews who send their young people, the “hilltop youth”, to harass and intimidate local Palestinians in the surrounding countryside. The relentless land grabs and intimidation is a pattern repeated up and down the West Bank in a campaign the UN has called ethnic cleansing, which has been driven by hardline members of the ruling coalition, the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. “First they kicked the Bedouin out in the last three years and put up their caravans and bring their cows and sheep. They are using the land without any permission from the owners and from ourselves,” said Father Bashar Fawadleh, the parish priest of Christ the Redeemer church. After driving out Bedouin nomads and their flocks, Fawadleh said the settlers began to drive their cows and sheep into the olive groves and fields which have been Taybeh’s lifeblood for millennia. “For three years now, we have been forbidden to visit our land. We are forbidden from tending the olive trees,” he said. The only times local people venture out into the countryside is when diplomats from the French and Italian consulates come to accompany them for a few days each harvest season. Over the past year, the pressure has been turned up further. In July last year, settlers set fire to the grounds of the fifth–century Byzantine church, St Peter’s. Since then, bands of hilltop youth have raided the town four times, setting fire to cars, slashing tires and smashing windows. On 19 March, the parish said about 30 settlers took over a concrete factory and stone quarry on the edge of Taybeh, raised the Israeli flag and held prayers on the site, in what was seen locally as a statement of intent that the interlopers would start taking over parts of the town itself. In February, the security cabinet approved measures allowing Israelis to buy property in the occupied West Bank, an important step towards annexation. What sets Taybeh apart from other besieged West Bank towns is its identity as a completely Christian town with ancient roots. This brings it a modicum of protection, such as from the harvest visits by diplomats, but it also makes the community as a whole more vulnerable. Western countries generally have been more welcoming to Palestinian Christians than their Muslim neighbours, meaning it is easier for them to leave – which is what has been happening. The church, part of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, supports small business ventures to provide jobs and builds affordable housing, but the community is still haemorrhaging. Fifteen families have left in the past two years, leaving the current population at about 1,100. After the attack on St Peter’s church in July, the US ambassador, Mike Huckabee, visited the town to condemn what he called “an act of terror” and to appeal for prosecutions. No prosecutions have been reported, and Huckabee has not spoken out over any of the subsequent attacks on Taybeh. A Southern Baptist minister, the ambassador is a fervent supporter of Israel’s territorial claims to the West Bank and beyond, which he argues are divinely ordained. Huckabee’s support for Israel’s expansionist policies has attracted criticism from American Christians, including from the US right. The far-right commentator, Tucker Carlson, repeatedly challenged the ambassador over the treatment of Palestinian Christians in a combative two-hour interview in February. Huckabee rejected claims of Israeli mistreatment as “a lie” and pointed out that the 184,000 Christian population in Israel, mostly Palestinian Israelis, had grown rapidly in recent decades. In the West Bank however, the Christian population has shrunk from 5% of the total population in 1967 to roughly 1% today, about 45,000 people. The fierce religious nationalism that the Israeli government has cultivated in recent years has largely been directed at Palestinian Muslims but there has been a rising tide of anti-Christian incidents. The Religious Freedom Data Center (RFDC), an Israeli-run organisation that documents such incidents in Jerusalem, recorded a 65% rise in cases of harassment, many of them involving spitting on Christians. “We identify a connection between the national mood, the prevailing tensions, and the government’s backing which together foster a sense of superiority among Jews – a factor contributing to the rise in attacks against non-Jews,” the RFDC’s director, Yisca Harani, wrote on the organisation’s website. Aware of sharply declining US popular support since the start of the Gaza war (a February Gallup poll showed more Americans sympathising with Palestinians than with Israelis for the first time) Israel has sought to court US evangelicals, who, like Huckabee, see Israeli expansionism as being grounded in biblical teaching. The foreign ministry hosted more than 1,000 evangelical pastors and Christian influencers on an all expenses-paid trip in November. “Israel is the only country in the Middle East and one of the few countries in the world that stands up for Christians,” Benjamin Netanyahu told the conservative US television outlet Newsmax, on Monday. The Haaretz newspaper argued however that the government’s support for Christian groups was conditional on “loyalty to the political agenda of Netanyahu and his far-right coalition”. Jad Isaac, the director general of the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem, which tracks the Israeli takeover of land and resources on the West Bank, said: “When Netanyahu says we are the only country which is taking care of the Christians, he’s a liar. He said that in Palestinian Christian communities in the West Bank “the strategy is to make life intolerable”. On the last bit of open green hillside east of Bethlehem, a new Israeli settlement has sprung up which local Christians fear will tighten the noose around their precarious existence. The area under threat is Beit Sahour, “house of the night watch” in Arabic, known to Christians as Shepherds’ Field, a place of pilgrimage. About 80% of its population are Christian, and the town is built around a cluster of churches of different denominations. The only remaining open expanse is a green valley which descends steeply from the south-east corner of town. It is just possible to imagine biblical shepherds guiding their flocks through the grass patches and rocky outcrops, until the point where the view is jarred by a military watchtower, a radio antenna and a cluster of prefabricated huts on the far side of the valley. The hilltop known as Ush Ghrab (Crow’s Nest) was the site of an abandoned military base, where the Beit Sahour’s civic leaders had hoped to build a children’s hospital and playground. Permission was repeatedly turned down by the Israeli military, and in November bulldozers appeared, flattening a space where the mobile homes suddenly materialised, housing a group of armed settlers. By January, this rogue outpost had been speedily legalised as the settlement of Yatziv, and Smotrich attended the opening, telling reporters: “We’re going to be here for ever.” Since then a handful of settlers have been seen strolling along the edge of Beit Sahour, assault rifles slung around their shoulders, and local Palestinians have kept away, well aware of the record of settler and army violence across the West Bank. So far this year, according to UN figures, there were 1,828 settler attacks on 270 Palestinian communities in 2025 – an average of five per day. Rifat Kassis, a Beit Sahour community activist and member of the town’s Lutheran congregation, fears today’s handful of huts is the seed of something far greater and more threatening, in line with a pattern that has spread across the whole West Bank. “A settlement is not just about the house, but it’s a whole construction, because with the settlement comes roads, military roads, bypass roads and settler-only roads to connect to other settlements,” Kassis said. “This is exactly our fear as Palestinians and also as Christians, that we will become like any other village next to a settlement, with daily harassment, daily shooting, daily arrests of our kids.” The whole Bethlehem area has been surrounded by settlements steadily infringing on the town. A hulking grey concrete wall runs through the centre, separating off an area around the Jewish shrine of Rachel’s Tomb. According to Isaac, Israel now controls 87% of historic Bethlehem. Palestinians live increasingly enclosed lives, their right to move determined by the Israeli military. Kassis, a devout Christian, has not been allowed to visit Jerusalem just 9km away for 35 years, because of his participation in non-violent civil disobedience including a Beit Lahour tax strike in 1989. All his children have moved abroad in search of a viable future and Kassis worries about the death of this ancient community. “We kept our existence and presence for the past 2,000 years uninterrupted, despite all the turmoil, one empire after another, invasion after invasion and war and another war,” he said. “But since the occupation the pressure imposed on us comes from all sides … Israel has managed to create an atmosphere where there is no hope.”

‘I was beaten and tortured’: how a British father and son made a fortune in Dubai then became wanted men

A four-metre barbed-wire fence runs through the desert at the UAE‑Omani border. In the early hours of 17 February 2021, Albert Douglas, 58, a British businessman, was creeping along it, looking for a way through. Douglas, who cuts a slight figure, wears spectacles and has a broad, earnest smile, never expected things to come to this. He’d been forced to abandon his home on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, the tree-shaped archipelago lined with upmarket residences, and go into hiding. Usually he’d be driving around in a Rolls-Royce, now he was in a pickup truck, being chauffeured by people smugglers. They’d transported him to the edge of the Al Ain border, which neighbours Oman, in the dead of the night. It was incredible, really, how fast the life he once led could evaporate. All that mattered now was getting to the other side of that fence. A few weeks earlier, Douglas had been sitting at home, watching his supreme court appeal via video link. He was being hounded by the Dubai authorities over debts incurred by his son Wolfgang Douglas’s company and, while Wolfgang was in the UK, Albert had been arrested. Albert was facing a £2.5m fine and a three-year prison sentence – this was his final chance for a reprieve. He had always believed the truth would prevail, but as he watched the hearing play out, his faith in the system deserted him. He decided to lie low in a friend’s apartment while he weighed his options. It soon became clear that he didn’t have any. “That’s when I decided to leave,” he says. “I left it not to the last minute, but the last second.” The escape plan was activated. Soon, Albert was making his way to the border, switching cars along the way. They pitched up in a nearby village to await nightfall. As he approached the fence, trying to locate a hole that had been cut in advance, all seemed to be going smoothly. Then the calm of the desert was broken by shouts and gunshots. Red dots peppered Albert’s body – laser sights from the weapons of UAE soldiers closing in on him. Wolfgang, who was following the situation from his home in Kensington, London, was dialled into the phone of one of the people smugglers on the other side of the fence. Now gunshots crackled down the line. Before he could find out what was happening, the phone went dead. Out in the desert, soldiers surrounded Albert. He begged them not to shoot. A hood was pulled over his head. Albert doesn’t know where he was taken (his family believes it was a military base), but he found himself in a dark, dirty cell. He says he was stripped, slapped, deprived of sleep and interrogated over several days. He was asked repeatedly for details about the smugglers. “I wasn’t withholding information,” he says. “I didn’t have the answer. So I was beaten and I was tortured.” Albert was then taken to Al Ain central prison in Abu Dhabi. While he was being held there, three guards entered his cell. By the time they left, he was unconscious. His head had been “kicked around like a football”; his shoulder badly broken. Albert, who still wakes up screaming about the experience, recalls a state of total shock. “You just assume it’s going to stop,” he says. “It doesn’t stop, but you just think it’s gonna stop, and, basically, thereon after, you think you’re gonna die.” In London, Wolfgang was spiralling. With no means of getting hold of Albert directly, he activated his contacts in the UAE to look for him. His first thought was that the gunshots came from the smugglers, not soldiers. He had heard about people getting killed and dumped in ditches along the border, and organised a search along the line to look for a body. They called the hospitals, even the police, but nothing. Days passed, a week. While Wolfgang frantically searched, Albert was being held in solitary confinement. About 10 days had passed when Wolfgang received a phone call from an unknown UAE number. “Son,” Albert’s voice came through the earpiece, the sound of shouts and screams echoing in the background, “I am not OK.” Dubai has always been a place you escape to, or escape from. The competing visions of the city – the one beamed out on social media, and its complex reality – have never been more pronounced than in recent weeks, its pristine veneer pierced by Iranian missiles, causing expats, tourists and the much‑maligned “influencer class” to scramble for flights out of the country. The conflict has shaken the notion that the UAE is an island of stability in the Middle East, tarnishing its appeal to foreigners. It has also exposed the extent to which its public image is tightly controlled by its rulers. Influencers – who, since 2025 have required a government licence – as well as the general population, were warned that they faced fines or imprisonment for sharing footage from “unknown sources”. Twenty-one people – including a 60-year-old British tourist – have reportedly been charged in relation to sharing content related to the attacks. Before the US-Israel war on Iran, an estimated 250,000 British expatriates lived in the UAE, a number that had grown substantially in recent years. Most reside in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, the latter being the most aggressively marketed of the seven emirates. The UAE is, to many, a welcome off-ramp from the high taxes, crumbling public services and miserable weather back home. Never mind the criminalisation of homosexuality; the absence of political parties; that married victims of sexual assault can be prosecuted for extramarital sex; or that the city’s network of AI-powered facial recognition cameras and biometric identification makes it one of the most highly surveilled locations in the world. Successive UK governments have championed closer economic relations with the UAE, Britain’s largest trading partner in the Middle East. In 2021, the UK launched a joint partnership aimed at deepening ties across various sectors; this £23bn trade relationship is one reason why there are now more than 5,000 British businesses operating in the country – a number that is predicted to double by 2030. Lately, Dubai’s economic vitality has become a stick to beat the UK with, in particular by those on the political right. Nick Candy, the property developer and treasurer for Reform UK (who recently launched a $2bn luxury property venture in the UAE), told the National that Dubai had “all the ingredients you need to make the perfect cake … you’ve got low crime, low taxation, great quality of life”. After the Iranian missiles rained down in March, he said he still felt “safer in Dubai than in Sadiq Khan’s London”. The reality is that those arriving in the UAE to do business are uniquely vulnerable. Debt is frequently treated as a criminal matter, and a bounced cheque – even a dispute over a taxi fare – can land you in prison. Power is concentrated within the minority Emirati population, and the legal system can be weaponised against foreigners who fall out of favour. In 2023, the Labour peer Helena Kennedy KC oversaw a fact-finding report on “the real cost of doing business in the UAE”. It noted “concerns regarding the criminal justice system … in particular the impact … on non-Emirati nationals”, and a “substantial disconnect” between the public image of Dubai and the evidence presented. One of the most egregious cases is that of the British property developer Ryan Cornelius and his business partner Charles Ridley, who were jailed in 2008 after a fraud conviction related to a loan from Dubai Islamic Bank. They received a 10-year sentence, while the bank has seized assets worth $1.6bn – three times the value of the original loan – including Cornelius’s family home in London. In 2018, their sentence was extended by a further 20 years. They have remained there ever since. These dangers are not mentioned in the UK government’s latest guidance on overseas business risk in the UAE. Previous guidance (which was withdrawn in 2020) only went so far as to admit that the country can be “a demanding and sometimes frustrating market in which to do business”. Pitched against Albert’s testimony, this is quite the understatement. His story raises uncomfortable questions about the nature of the UK/UAE relationship; the reluctance of the Foreign Office to intervene when citizens are detained there; and whether the British citizens who flock to Dubai, for work or leisure are being adequately warned about the risks of doing so. * * * When Albert first landed in Dubai in the late 90s, the place was everything a businessman could want: a new frontier, bursting with potential. Albert, from Enfield, north London, comes from a Romany‑Gypsy business family and had built up his wooden flooring company, CCS, over many years. He is a soft-spoken, old fashioned sort of man – the sort, Wolfgang says, who would always wear a three-piece suit, even on the beach – and has a strong work ethic. In 2002, Dubai sparked a boom in immigration when it passed a law allowing foreigners to buy property in certain areas, and a couple of years later Albert and his wife, Naomi, decided to move there full-time. Wolfgang, the eldest of four siblings, who had entered the family business as soon as he left school, continued to run operations in the UK. At the time, Dubai was experiencing explosive growth. Mega-projects such as the Palm Jumeirah and the Burj Khalifa – today the tallest building in the world – were well under way and the population was booming. Albert soon realised that the market in the Gulf was even bigger than he had imagined, so in 2008 he suggested that Wolfgang join him and start another flooring company. It was to be a “friendly competitor” that would allow the family a bigger footprint in the region. Wolfgang closed the UK firm and flew out to start his own, named TimberWolf Flooring. By then, construction had been completed on the Palm Jumeirah and soon most of the family was living there. Albert lived on O Frond. Wolfgang on F. At first, it was all very on-brand. The family were embraced by the Dubai elite and invited to galas and dinners. The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, gifted them a pet tiger cub, Snowy (Wolfgang took care of it until it grew too big to handle, when it was returned to the sheikh’s private zoo). Every day, Wolfgang says, felt “like winning the lottery”, and as part of the “original expats” community, cruising around in Aston Martins and Ferraris while sparkling new skyscrapers rocketed up around them, they embodied the image that Dubai wanted to project. The state was developing in real time. It reminded Albert of the “wild west”, he says. “Jumeirah Janes” was the nickname given to the wives of western expats living there at the time. Albert says he was never really there for the lifestyle. He was a “workaholic”, and spent any spare time with his family. But extroverts such as Wolfgang were happy to lean into the city’s flashy culture. Wolfgang enjoyed being part of Dubai’s social scene and soon became a point of contact for other British entrepreneurs and expats who wanted to move there. He describes being part of a community of “hand-picked B-list business development celebrities” who would be rolled out at parties, or encouraged to drop in when a new celebrity bought a house in the city. “I was the example of ‘This is what success looks like’,” says Wolfgang. “The proof in the pudding.” And it was good, until it wasn’t. Wolfgang was involved in supplying wooden flooring, as well as bespoke wood designs and facades, for big government‑related projects, including the Burj Khalifa, La Mer beach and City Walk. Over time, he says, it became increasingly difficult to recoup payments for the work he was doing. “We’re talking tens of millions,” he says. With no money coming in, Wolfgang was unable to pay his creditors and once you start to default, “the laws are heavily tilted against you”. Pursuing this money would have meant taking on the government, says Wolfgang, and he knew enough about how Dubai operated to realise that a situation like this could quickly spin out of control. Being in debt is a vulnerable position to be in in Dubai, where financial offences are met with severe penalties. In the UAE, a creditor can use the civil courts to have a debtor jailed or subjected to an indefinite travel ban. Though in recent years the country has introduced new insolvency laws and largely ended the criminalisation of bounced cheques, such cases can still be pursued in civil cases and result in imprisonment. Being jailed does not absolve a debtor – you will not be released until it has been paid or, under the recent reforms, the debt formally restructured. The system is often summarised as, “No pay, no go.” If someone doing business falls out of favour with those in power, the criminal justice system can be exploited. This could be to force someone out of a partnership, extract bribes or, in the case of Cornelius and Ridley, who were targeted by Mohammed Ibrahim al Shaibani, chairman of DIB, and Sheikh Mohammed’s right-hand man, used as part of a corporate raid in which money and assets are seized. “It’s always the same story,” Radha Stirling, founder of Detained in Dubai, a human rights and advocacy organisation, tells me. “A foreigner comes, sets up, is embraced, starts trading, then an Emirati official or bank manager will target them.” In 2019, Wolfgang returned to the UK for treatment after a health emergency. While there, he sought legal advice from a UAE law firm. He was told that people in the country wanted him in prison and that he should not return. As Wolfgang was recovering, Albert travelled to London. They met at the Exhibitionist hotel in Kensington to take stock. Albert told Wolfgang that the police in Dubai had been seizing Wolfgang’s goods without paperwork. “They’re out of control,” he told his son. Albert was indignant. In his view, neither man had done anything wrong and he was unwilling to relinquish the business he had built up. He had secured a legal letter that confirmed he was not connected to Wolfgang’s business and believed he could continue to operate his own company safely. Crucially, he believed in the system. “I just thought it was going to sort itself out,” he told me. Wolfgang urged his father to stay in the UK. “If you go back,” he said, “they will target you.” Albert brushed it off. In August 2019, he flew back to Dubai, ready to resume business. When he landed at Dubai international airport, he was arrested. * * * For a foreigner, Dubai’s legal system can be as dizzying as its skyline. After his arrest, Albert was bailed and given a travel ban. There followed a hearing in Arabic in which no evidence was presented by either side but Albert was found guilty. Only later did he begin to learn of the case against him. The prosecution rested on the fact that Albert’s name appeared as a signatory on a trade licence used when he was helping Wolfgang set up in the UAE. However, the document they pulled up, which needs to be renewed annually, was outdated. Albert’s name had long since been removed and not appeared on it for many years prior to the complaint. When this was challenged at appeal, the prosecutor presented a bounced security cheque, which Albert maintains he never signed (this was later confirmed by a forensic report commissioned by the family, but the evidence was never acknowledged by the court). “Am I allowed to speak?” Albert implored at one point during proceedings. He was cautioned about the risk of further imprisonment for speaking English in the Arabic courts. As he haemorrhaged money on legal fees to take his appeal to the highest court, his business, like Wolfgang’s, began to collapse. The authorities seized assets and property, and he was threatened and blackmailed by creditors. The legal advice he received was that the case was rigged; he didn’t stand a chance. As the final appeal approached, Wolfgang was taking practical steps to extract his father from the country. He brokered a meeting with a representative of a people-smuggling gang in Wembley, London; a fee of £20,000 was handed over and it was done. Someone would cut a hole in the fence in preparation. One car would transport Albert to the border; another would be waiting just beyond it. From there to the coast, where a boat would take him across the strait to Iran, where another group would take him to the Pakistan border, which he would cross on foot. Then he would lie low before taking a plane back to the UK with an emergency travel document. On landing, as Wolfgang explained, Albert would present himself, “Hands up, help me, I’m running for my life.” For Albert, who had always felt at ease living and working in Dubai, it was hard to process. “I thought the people who got put in jail were there because they must have done something wrong,” he says. “I thought they had been found guilty fairly.” Albert always ran a straight business, he tells me, and shied away from anything that hinted at underhand dealings. “I had never heard of financial entrapment,” he says. “I can assure you, once I ended up in Dubai’s central jail, I met dozens and dozens and dozens of people who had …” * * * Ending up in prison in Dubai is a bit like going through the looking-glass. About 90% of the inmates are foreign nationals (a similar proportion to that of the UAE as a whole), only here they are living in squalid conditions and regularly subjected to violence. It’s still a “pay to play” place, though, and survival depends on financial injections from family or friends on the outside who can pay for small comforts, or ensure a prisoner is not mistreated. Albert, who has back problems, had to sit on the floor for months before he was able to go before a committee to get permission to have a plastic garden chair. He was charged £100 for it. In June 2021, after going back and forth between institutions, Albert was transferred to Al Awir, Dubai’s central prison, a large complex on the outskirts of the city, where he would spend most of his sentence. He would end up sharing a cell with Cornelius and Ridley, as well as Zack Shahin, an American property developer who was detained for nine and a half years before being given what is in effect a life sentence in 2017. Albert would also encounter many inmates from other countries, representing the full spectrum of Dubai’s class divide. Most prisoners in the UAE are from south Asia; migrant workers, whose visa status is tied to employers through the kafala system, can risk detention for simply trying to leave their job. His cell – “it was a cage,” he says, emphatically – frequently accommodated up to 15 men, but only had three sets of bunks, so some inmates would be forced to sleep on the floor. The mattresses were ragged foam and the blankets filthy, says Albert, “but you were glad of them”. Albert visited the gym twice in four years; there was a three-month waiting list to use the library. Visits from friends, family or solicitors were blocked by the authorities. It was “absolute boredom”, says Albert. He developed a habit in which he would go to sleep at 3pm every day and not wake up until 3am in the morning. He’s not sure how he did it, what with the constant noise, but he’d put himself “in a coma”. By the time Albert arrived at Al Awir, he was well versed in the endemic brutality of the system. In Al Barsha prison, he had witnessed an inmate in the cell opposite being raped by guards. Suicides were common. During his detention, Albert was subjected to further periods of sleep deprivation and interrogation, and pressed to sign confession papers in Arabic – a language he did not speak. Many inmates were facing death sentences for murder and had little to lose by enacting further violence on those around them. Once, also in Al Barsha, when Albert was on the phone, he was attacked by an inmate, who wrapped the cord around his neck and throttled him. Albert learned to keep his head down. A bone in his hand was broken during one incident, and it would be a year before Albert finally received medical treatment for the shoulder that had been broken in Al Ain and which required surgery. He believes this was only due to coverage of his situation in the UK media. While Albert was in hospital awaiting the operation, he says a man entered his room with a camera crew. He was told to record a TV interview in which he would express how well he was being treated by the Dubai police. When he refused, they threatened to rescind his medical treatment, but the following morning it went ahead as planned. * * * In the UK, Wolfgang was lobbying hard to have his father freed. The consular assistance he expected did not come readily, and his fury at the UAE was soon matched by his outrage with the Foreign Office. When Wolfgang contacted the Foreign Office to inform them that Albert had been beaten, he claims that he was told “that wouldn’t have happened”. He says it took months before they finally accepted that his heart medication was being withheld. Wolfgang insisted that consular officials visit his father in prison, and when they were refused access he had to protest for months before a video call was finally arranged between Albert and an embassy official. Albert says he had been threatened before the call and was flanked by guards. When he was asked if he was being treated well, he could do little more than nod. The Foreign Office, Wolfgang tells me, seemed unwilling to accept the evidence that Albert was a victim of torture, and inclined to take the word of the UAE authorities regarding his father’s treatment. Over his years in prison, Albert was only visited by Foreign Office officials “a handful” of times. “It was an uphill battle,” he says. “These people would do anything – anything – to not have a one-on-one with the UAE.” Instead, it fell on Wolfgang to sustain pressure and keep attention on the case. He lobbied politicians and, in 2021, the Labour peer Janet Whitaker and Andy Slaughter MP, co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, wrote to Dominic Raab, then foreign secretary, urging him to work with the UAE to exonerate Albert. As they pointed out, leaders in many other countries – including the US, Malaysia and Canada – have taken swift action to secure the release of citizens detained in the UAE. In some cases foreign ministers have travelled to the UAE to do so. Yet Albert is not the only British citizen to have found himself dismayed at the UK’s aversion to asserting diplomatic pressure on their behalf. In 2018, Matthew Hedges, a British academic, was arrested in Dubai while on a research trip, charged with espionage and sentenced to 25 years in jail. He was released after six months, largely due to vociferous campaigning by his wife, Daniela Tejada. Hedges tells me that when the Foreign Office learned she had gone to the press about his case it contacted editors to try to suppress the story. In 2023, the parliamentary ombudsman found that the Foreign Office had failed in its duty to protect Hedges and “missed signs of potential torture”. And, similar to Albert’s experience, when consular officers visited Hedges in prison, they seemed to take his condition at face value – despite the presence of guards “who had told him what to say”, Hedges says. The approach, he adds, is “all about keeping things placid, not wanting to rock the boat”. This may explain why Cornelius and Ridley have remained in detention for nearly two decades – nearly seven years after completing their original sentence. In recent years, the case has been taken up by Sir Bill Browder, a British-American businessman who was the largest foreign investor in Russia before being declared a threat to national security after exposing state corruption. Browder believes the UK should be leveraging targeted Magnitsky sanctions (on assets or travel, for example) against individuals in the UAE to have Cornelius and Ridley released – yet it refuses to do so. “The case is one of the most shocking I’ve ever seen,” he told me, adding that two men who have “effectively committed no crime, have been taken hostage by a corrupt regime for 18 years and will die in prison if something is not done”. In Browder’s view, the British government is still only paying lip service to the case. He doesn’t mince his words, saying, “It’s remarkable that if you’re British and you get into a scrape with a country that has, you know, money, you’re shit out of luck.” It’s notable that Gulf money flows into the UK, too. As a previous Guardian investigation revealed, Sheikh Mohammed is one of Britain’s biggest landowners with a 40,000-hectare (100,000 acres) portfolio that includes the £75m Longcross estate in Surrey and a substantial proportion of Newmarket, the Suffolk horse-racing town. Boris Johnson once joked that Britain is the “eighth emirate”. * * * In November 2023, 10 days before his two‑year sentence was due to complete, Albert received a pardon from Sheikh Mohammed. This, Wolfgang tells me, was the result of a sustained “pressure campaign” led by himself and Radha Stirling, from Detained in Dubai. Yet still Albert remained inside. Civil cases were outstanding, he was told, yet neither the family nor the Foreign Office were given details, or any understanding of how much longer he would be held. Wolfgang submitted Albert’s case to UN refugee agency the UNHCR’s working group on arbitrary detention, and on 25 April 2025 it put the claims to the Dubai authorities. It received no response, but one month later, without warning, prison guards took Albert from his cell, handed him his things in a plastic bowl, and released him. Albert emerged from the prison compound stunned. It was night and he was alone in the middle of the desert. He had no phone and only a little cash. It took him two hours to find a taxi, and he managed to get himself to a friend’s house. Even at this point he was not completely free. He no longer had any official ID and was not able to leave Dubai. Over the ensuing months, Albert tells me, he depended on the charity of friends in the city. “You’re outside and very pleased to be outside,” says Albert, “but you’re a prisoner in the country.” Albert spent that period constantly looking over his shoulder, wondering if the police would pick him up and take him back to prison. In October 2025, the UNHCR working group published its opinion on the case. It declared Albert’s detention arbitrary and that his human rights had been violated on numerous counts. It raised concerns about the denial of due process, his right to a fair trial and allegations of torture. It demanded his freedom and urged the government of the UAE to investigate, stating that the “appropriate remedy would be to accord Mr Douglas an enforceable right to compensation”. There was no response. Then, in December 2025, Albert was put on a plane, and deported to the UK. * * * In March, I meet Albert and Wolfgang at the Bailey’s hotel in Kensington. I find them in a corner of the bar, drinking tea. Albert is dressed in a simple grey suit with purple lining, Wolfgang in a Prada T-shirt and black baseball cap. We had been speaking for a few weeks by now, and Wolfgang, who is unwavering in his pursuit of accountability for the injustice faced by his father, is as fired up as ever. Social media is teeming with schadenfreude about the plight of Dubai influencers, and Wolfgang is thrilled to see the critical discourse go mainstream. “We’re watching the paint being stripped from a falsehood,” he says, gleefully. That Albert was released at all makes him a “one in a million” case, says Wolfgang. He believes it was due to media pressure – “the only language they understand” – and, ultimately, the influence of the UN. However, the UAE’s internal politics matter, too. The continued detention of Cornelius, Ridley and Shahin (whom the UN has also called to be released) is associated with the influence of Al Shaibani. Clearly, there is a cost-benefit calculation as to whether keeping someone in prison is worth the reputational damage. Like everything else in the UAE, the process by which such a calculation is made remains a black box. Now Wolfgang is determined to achieve some semblance of accountability. His father’s case, he tells me, shows “the reality of Dubai”, and he wants it known. Although Albert was released, the UAE has not acknowledged his innocence, or returned the tens of millions of pounds in assets and property it seized from the family. They are pursuing a number of compensation claims against the UAE. They are also seeking compensation from the Foreign Office and fighting for it to release the correspondence it has on Albert. Wolfgang wants the travel advice to be appropriately updated. In the coming months, the UN special rapporteur on torture will release a further opinion on the evidence of Albert’s case. Albert, who listens patiently as his son speaks, takes up far less space both physically, and in conversation. When he does contribute, he is clear, engaged and articulate, but it is evident that the experience has worn on him. He raises a hand with a crooked finger – one mark of what he went through. There are scars on his left shoulder. Other scars are less visible. The ordeal has taken a toll on his marriage and his family. He has blackouts – he can’t be left on his own in case he falls. “I’ve been told I have post-traumatic stress disorder,” says Albert. He suffers from nightmares; the same flashback on repeat. “Someone is chasing me and beating me and then you wake up and you’re sweating and you’re wide awake.” When Albert arrived at Heathrow airport, he kissed the floor. Since then, he has spent all his time reconnecting with his five grandchildren. He lights up when he talks about them. One of them was playing with dolls when he last saw her. Now she is talking about discos, preparing to do her driving theory exam. He says he is gradually rebuilding his strength. “You get used to eating what you want, when you want,” he says. “Chocolate tea cakes, crumpets, HP Sauce!” At one point, he thought he would never see his family again. “I thought they’d never let me out because of what it would expose,” says Albert. “Once you’re out, you can speak freely.” Though soft-spoken, he is determined to use his voice, and as we stand to leave he approaches me. “You will mention Ryan [Cornelius], won’t you?” he says. He feels almost guilty to be out, he admits, and those he shared a cell with – like Cornelius – weigh on his mind. “I think of them all the time,” he says. “There’s so many people, you know. Sometimes I’ve been locked up 24 hours a day for seven days a week … so you’re with them. And you know they shouldn’t be there.”

Netanyahu confirms attack on petrochemical plant– as it happened

This blog has closed, but our live coverage of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East continues here. Here’s the latest news: Iran’s central military command rejected US president Donald Trump’s threat to destroy the country’s vital infrastructure if it did not accept a peace deal within 48 hours, calling it “helpless”. Earlier, Trump said Iran had 48 hours to make or deal or open the strait of Hormuz before “all hell will reign down on them”. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed that Israel attacked Iran’s petrochemical plants after reports from Iranian media saying at least five people were killed in an attack on the Mahshahr petrochemical zone. US search and rescue efforts for the missing second crew member of the downed F-15E fighter jet continued into a second day as Iran came under heavy bombing. A pilot had been rescued on Friday after the F-15E Strike Eagle became the first US plane to be downed over Iran during the five-week-long war. American and Israeli fighter jets targeted multiple strategic and civilian sites inside Iran’s capital on Friday afternoon, including Shahid Beheshti University, one of the country’s leading academic institutions, Iranian state media reported. The death toll in Lebanon has reached 1,422 since the conflict with Israel began on 2 March, according to data from the Lebanese health ministry and reported by the Associated Press. In just the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes have killed 54 people and wounded 156. The Kuwaiti Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that its air defense forces successfully intercepted eight ballistic missiles and 19 drones over the last 24 hours. However, on Sunday a fire has erupted in the Shuwaikh oil sector complex that houses the oil ministry and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation headquarters, after a drone attack, and Kuwaiti state media reported that two power and water desalination plants sustained “significant material damage” after being attacked by Iranian drones. A Lebanese security source at the main crossing between Syria and Lebanon, said they were evacuating the crossing after Israel threatened to attack it. The Israeli military said on Saturday it would strike an area near the Masnaa crossing urging residents to evacuate immediately as it continued its attacks across Lebanon. Residents of southern Lebanon’s Kfar Hatta were told on social media by Israel to immediately leave the area, and warned that the Israeli military would soon act “with force” in the area.