Naji Hamdan's Nightmare

By Anna Louie Sussman

This article appeared in the March 22, 2010 edition of The Nation.

March 4, 2010

CAITLIN DOVER

Beirut, Lebanon

At only one point in his story did Naji Hamdan cry. Sitting in an office chair as he recounted how he was arrested, tortured and ultimately convicted of terrorism charges in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), his voice barely wavered. Only when he described how Emirati interrogators threatened to rape his wife in front of him if he did not confess to charges of supporting Al Qaeda did he lose control, pausing to accept a fistful of Kleenex before he continued his story.

"For two weeks I could not stand on my feet. I had to use the help of a Nepali guard to drag me to the bathroom," he said of a period following a particularly brutal beating, around three weeks into his two-month detention.

Hamdan, 43, was born in Lebanon and moved to the United States in 1984. He studied aerospace engineering, worked at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) as an aircraft mechanic, then for Northrop Grumman, and eventually opened his own auto parts business, HondAcura Palace. In his downtime, he played soccer, camped and hiked, and as of 1992 began raising his son, Khaled. A few years later he became a naturalized citizen. A devout Sunni Muslim, he was active in the Muslim community and helped to found the Islamic Center of Hawthorne, in Southern California.

In 1999 the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited him at home, inquiring about a possible millennial terrorist attack. The bureau also interrogated others in the local Muslim community, asking whether they knew of any imminent plots.

"They asked if I knew any terrorists, would I go and tell them," said Hamdan. "Of course I would. My kids were going to school there. I have businesses there."

Hamdan's brother Hossam, who goes by the name Sam, got a visit too. At the time, he recalled, "We were like, What the hell are they talking about?"

The FBI kept Hamdan on its radar for the next ten years, contacting him, he estimates, on six occasions. Officials asked about his business, his political beliefs and whether he knew Osama bin Laden (he knew bin Laden as well as anyone else did at the time, "from the media," as he put it). During this time, air travel became increasingly difficult for him; he was often stopped and questioned for hours, on one occasion missing a flight out of LAX.

Hamdan moved his family to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in 2006, where he hoped to expose his children to Islamic culture and the Arabic language, as well as the American culture of business and entrepreneurship. There, he thought, they could have "the best of both worlds." He had heard it was "more modern and developed" than the rest of the region.

"And peaceful," added his wife, a look of pained irony on her face.

Even after relocating, he continued to face harassment at airports and particularly on trips back to the United States, where he and Sam continued to operate the auto parts business. On one visit in March 2007, he says, he was interrogated at LAX for more than four hours, followed by SUVs with tinted windows and repeatedly photographed. He cut his trip short.

"They were kind of pushing me out of the country as if I'm not an American citizen anymore," he said. "And that is sad."

That treatment was gentle compared with the reception he got from the government of the United Arab Emirates. At noon on August 26, 2008, six weeks after FBI agents had summoned him for about four hours of interrogation at the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, he got a call saying his car, parked downstairs from his apartment, had been in an accident. The sun shining, he went downstairs in shorts and a T-shirt (he had been napping) to check his vehicle. Emirati officials arrived on the scene, handcuffed and blindfolded him, and drove away in custom-made SUVs with tinted windows.

Held incommunicado for one month and twenty-three days, Hamdan says he was subject to near-daily beatings and torture for the first few weeks, after which the beatings slowed to every few days. In between he was left in total isolation.

"I don't know if it's a tactic or not," he said, "but it was painful also to leave me without even the guard talking to me."

The beatings were intended to elicit a confession of in-
volvement with a rotating cast of terrorist groups that would change from one day to the next. Initially, Hamdan protested his innocence. But the threat against his wife was too much, and he broke down.

"The interrogator said, You're going to sign a confession that you're with Al Qaeda and put your fingerprint on it," Hamdan remembers. But a few days later, he was taken from his cell to another interrogator, who said he'd received information "from a friendly country" that Hamdan was supporting the Gaza-based Palestinian group Hamas.

"He said, You have to change your confession," said Hamdan. Still fearing for his wife, he told them, "Listen, I'll do whatever you want."

Hamdan quickly came to believe that his Emirati interrogators were acting at the behest of the United States; at one point they questioned him about his recent interview with the FBI at the embassy, asking him why he was tense during their meeting.

"I didn't think of it when I first got detained, but when the beatings started, I knew right away," he said.

During one interrogation, Hamdan said, he believed an American interrogator was present in the room. He identified the man by his accent and his dress, which differed from the rest of the interrogators, who were wearing either white robes, a traditional men's dress in the Gulf, or the uniform that high-ranking military officers wear.

"From underneath my blindfold, I could see feet. He had on gray suit pants and black dress shoes," said Hamdan, "and he had a pure American accent. I encountered the FBI several times before. I have no doubt he was FBI."

As UAE agents introduced him to their full spectrum of torture techniques (a freezing cold isolation room, an electric chair they sat him in and threatened to turn on, kicks and punches to his already frail liver), his family searched in vain to discover his whereabouts. His wife says she went to the State Security offices and was told they'd never heard of her husband. She also says she called the US Embassy and the State Department, where staff claimed they were unaware of his case. Hamdan's brother Sam said he called Joshua Stone, an FBI agent who had interviewed Hamdan in Abu Dhabi.

"They weren't interested in talking about him," Sam recalled. "If he really didn't know what was happening to Naji, he would have been more interested. He'd want to know more," he concluded. At one point, he suggested to Stone that perhaps Naji was suspected of stealing cars, since he dealt in used automobiles.

"The guy laughed and said, 'Criminally? It's not that,'" Sam said.

The Hamdan family reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a habeas corpus suit in a Washington, DC, district court in November 2008. Although the judge dismissed the case in August 2009, finding a lack of jurisdiction, the suit shone light on Hamdan's predicament for the first time and highlighted the responsibility of the US government to attend to the detention of one of its citizens.

"One month and twenty-three days," said Hamdan incredulously of the time he was held incommunicado. "Normally if [Abu Dhabi authorities] detain a US citizen, they should report it to the embassy right away. But they did not."

After that period, Hamdan met with Sean Cooper, the consular chief for the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi. Three days before they met, his captors took his measurements, and on the day of the meeting gave him a brand-new outfit--shoes, pants, a shirt, underwear and socks--and a warning: "You better behave, because if you tell them anything, you're coming back to us, and you know what's going to happen." Looking spiffy, he arrived to find three Emirati officials, who would be present throughout the interview. He tried to use body language to indicate to Cooper that all was not well.

"He asked if I was being mistreated," remembered Hamdan, "and as I said no, I would turn my face to the side. Later, when I saw him, he said he had no idea something was wrong."

After their meeting, the beatings stopped, although another month passed before Hamdan was transferred to criminal custody. According to his lawyer, Jennie Pasquarella of ACLU Southern California, instead of helping the Hamdans secure Naji's release, the US government put up "major roadblocks at every turn." She and her colleagues were unable to persuade lawmakers to take up Hamdan's case publicly (she imagines they were "skittish" about "championing the case of someone labeled a terrorist") and got "the runaround" both in Washington and the Emitates.

"Even Congress has had little success at obtaining information about people the US has asked other countries to detain. Although our government is responsible for their detention, there is a black hole of information about those cases," she said.

In April 2009 Pasquarella and her colleagues obtained a nugget of information about a prior case that shed light on the possible circumstances of Hamdan's arrest and detention. A Freedom of Information Act request filed by the British House of Commons All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition turned up an e-mail from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that read, "At this time [redacted] is the only one we can get to. He is currently being held by the UAE pending our ability to do a Extraordinary Rendition." This e-mail, and America's historically warm economic and diplomatic relationship with the UAE, suggests that collusion in the field of counterterrorism would not be unheard of. Hamdan, who was not being held by the US, could not have been subject to extraordinary rendition--in which suspects are transferred from US to foreign custody--but his arrest fits the profile of a "proxy detention," in which the United States requests that someone be taken into custody in a foreign country.

The Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington, the United Arab Emirates office of the State Department, the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi and an Abu Dhabi government spokesman all declined to comment on the case. Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles field office, said that the bureau does not confirm or deny investigating Hamdan, but she added that the US government did not request a proxy detention in Hamdan's case.

With Hamdan's trial approaching in Abu Dhabi Federal Supreme Court last year, the FBI continued to investigate his businesses in America. It subpoenaed Daniel Sieu, 49, a former customer of Hamdan's who is the executive director of the Los Angeles-based Asian Pacific Revolving Loan Fund. Sieu had made several small loans to Hamdan as he expanded his business and bought small parcels of real estate. In January 2009 the FBI asked Sieu for everything in his files on Hamdan, which he says consisted of "a few basic loan applications." He was never called in for questioning and has not gotten back any of the material he submitted.

"Naji is a very nice guy," he said. "I consider him a friend."

The FBI also pursued another friend of Naji's, Jehad Suliman, beginning in 2002 with interrogations at HondAcura Palace, where Suliman is the manager. In July 2009, as Hamdan's case was playing out in Abu Dhabi, Suliman estimates that roughly a dozen agents entered his home with a search warrant relating to MediCal fraud. They seized a number of possessions, including documents unrelated to MediCal that referred to Hamdan and HondAcura Palace.

On January 29 of this year, Pasquarella filed a FOIA request for further information on the government's activities related to the Hamdan brothers and Suliman, but she expects it will take substantial litigation before anything comes to light.

Ultimately, after five hearings in front of Abu Dhabi's Federal Supreme Court, Hamdan was convicted of support for and spreading of terrorism. The prosecutor's case relied on Hamdan's signed confessions and a transcript of a chat-room conversation from a jihadi website in which Hamdan says he was not even a participant. According to Hamdan, in the course of the trial, he was accused of membership in six different terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam of Iraq and Fatah al-Islam.

Sitting in their living room in his eighth-floor apartment in Mar Elias, a busy commercial neighborhood in Beirut, and discussing his verdict, Hamdan and his wife still have trouble accepting it. "How could he have had the time" to be involved with all of these groups, his wife wondered aloud, while running an international auto parts business?

"They're six different organizations that are against each other," pointed out Hamdan.

Pasquarella, who was barred from attending one of the sessions on the pretext that the trial chamber's air-conditioning was broken, called the trial "a facade for political processes." A respected human rights lawyer in the UAE, who did not wish to be identified because of previous government harassment, said that while the UAE Supreme Court is generally independent, on national security issues it toes the government line.

According to Hamdan, the prosecutor had sought four counts of the death penalty and four counts of life imprisonment, which he was eligible for under the UAE 2004 anti-terrorism legislation. Instead, the court gave him an eighteen-month time-served sentence, essentially setting him free despite a finding of guilt.

"I knew I was not going to be acquitted, because it would show their guilt, but I was still hoping they would go back to their conscience and acquit me," he said resignedly. "I wasn't relieved at the sentence, though, because now I'm considered a terrorist."

After nine days and a bit of paperwork, he was deported to Lebanon.

Now he mostly spends his days with his wife, mother
and son, relaxing and looking after his health. His father died in October 2008; Hamdan said he died of a heart attack upon hearing of his son's detention. Recently his brother Sam received a notice addressed to Naji that his aircraft mechanic's license was being rescinded by the Transportation Security Administration. Hamdan still suffers pains in his wrists, neck and shoulders from the beatings, and he is taking medication for his liver and kidneys. But it is the mental scars that most stubbornly refuse to heal.

"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, just thinking about it," he said. "What bothers me the most is the unfairness of it all.... I got beaten, tortured and forced to sign something I didn't even read. I left all my wealth over there in that country, and I'm here, empty-handed, with these memories that are eating me alive."

About Anna Louie Sussman

Anna Louie Sussman is a freelance writer based in Beirut and New York.

Turkey, Georgia, UAE bankroll Caucasus rebels

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Created 02/01/2010 - 20:00

Militants in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region of Dagestan have received financing from supporters in Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, television said Saturday, after a special operation yielded notebooks of expenses kept by rebels.

The notebooks seized during a special operation in Dagestan conducted by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on New Year's Eve show the rebels had received hefty donations from their foreign sponsors, national television said, airing footage from the press department of the Dagestan branch of FSB.

"Tens of millions of rubles came from the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Turkey and Azerbajan," NTV channel said. Rossia television channel added that supporters from Saudi Arabia were also among the foreign sponsors.

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"The sums are huge," Rossia channel said. "There was never any doubt anyway that militants in the North Caucasus have been generously bankrolled. But that generously...."

The notebooks show that rebels also extorted money from local businessmen and unscrupulous officials, television reports said.

"The money was distributed among various groups" in Dagestan and was used to finance purchases of arms, medicine and cars, they said.

The notebooks belonged to the leader of Dagestan's rebels, Umalat Magomedov also known by his nom de guerre as Al-Bara, television reports said, adding he was one of four rebels killed during the December 31 operation in the town of Khasavyurt.

"In spring, Al Qaeda's emissary in the Caucasus appointed Magomedov commander of the Dagestan front," Rossia channel said.

Authorities have also seized machine guns, grenade launchers and 45 cell phones containing rebels' phone numbers.

Authorities have long said that Islamist rebels receive financing from abroad.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in August acknowledged "foreign" elements as a factor fomenting instability in the region, but stressed the root cause of the problem was within Russia itself, referring to corruption among law enforcement personnel.

Clashes between government forces and Islamist rebels are common in Dagestan.

Dagestan's neighbour Chechnya was the site of two bloody separatist wars after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and a low-level insurgency persists in the region despite the end of major hostilities.

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UAE 'seizes N Korea arms cargo' - BBC

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The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship illegally carrying embargoed North Korean weapons bound for Iran, diplomatic sources at the UN have said.

A diplomat told the AFP news agency that the UAE had informed UN officials responsible for implementing sanctions on Pyongyang.

The UK-based Financial Times reported earlier on Friday that the ship was seized "some weeks ago".

It said the armaments included rocket-propelled grenades.

The arms had been falsely labelled as "machine parts," the Financial Times reported, adding that the vessel was still being held in the UAE.

The diplomatic source told AFP that the issue was being dealt with by the UN Security Council's sanctions committee, and declined to comment further.

A new round of UN sanctions on North Korea was approved unanimously on 12 June, following a nuclear weapons test by Pyongyang and subsequent missile launches.

The UN resolution, which aimed to cut arms exports as a source of revenue for North Korea, also called for tougher inspections of air, sea and land shipments to and from the hard-line communist state.

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Leaders: China Seeks Friendly Ties with Islamic Countries

China would cement friendship and cooperation with the Islamic countries based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, President Hu Jintao told visiting Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayedal-Nahayanon, Aug. 14, 2009.(Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

BEIJING, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- China would cement friendship and cooperation with the Islamic countries based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, said President Hu Jintao on Friday afternoon.

China and the Islamic countries have maintained mutual respect and trust for a long time, and shown understanding and supported each other on issues concerning the core interest of the other side, Hu told visiting Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayedal-Nahayan.

Hu said China would like to promote dialogues and exchanges with different cultures and civilizations on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence.

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that is now China's second largest trading partner and important supplier of energy resources in the Arab world.

China and the UAE had enjoyed political trust, mutual support and reciprocal trade cooperation since they forged diplomatic ties25 years ago, said Hu, adding they had also maintained consultations on the international and regional issues.

"We appreciate the UAE government for its adherence to the one-China policy, as well as its support on the Taiwan issue and the issues concerning Tibet and Xinjiang," Hu said.

The president said the two countries were facing new opportunities for furthering relations, and China would work with the UAE to enhance cooperation to benefit the two countries and peoples.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao meets with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayedal-Nahayan, Aug. 14, 2009.(Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

Also on Friday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met with bin Zayedal-Nahayan.

Wen said the common grounds had increased between China and the UAE in coping with the global financial crisis, and both should take effective measures to expand cooperation on energy, trade, investment and financial fields.

He also said China would like to actively consult with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on the early signing of a free trade zone agreement.

bin Zayed al-Nahayan, who is making his first China tour since he became crown prince, said the UAE hoped to establish strategic cooperation with China in trade, oil and petrochemical fields.

He also said the Xinjiang riot on July 5 was China's internal affairs, and his country supported the Chinese government's effort to safeguard national unity, security and stability.

Editor: An

As Dubai's Glitter Fades, Foreigners See Dark Side

By Andrew Higgins
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 10, 2009

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Herve Jaubert, a French spy who left espionage to make leisure submarines for the wealthy, was riding high.

Bankrolled by Dubai World, a government-owned conglomerate, he built a submarine workshop on the Persian Gulf, lived rent-free in a villa with a pool and tooled around town in a red Lamborghini. He had two Hummers. He vacationed with local plutocrats.

Jaubert said he heard whispers about Dubai's darker side -- the abuse of desperate laborers from impoverished Asian lands, the jailing of the occasional Westerner who crossed a sheik -- but "I brushed it all off. I saw glamour. I saw marble columns, mirrors and money."

Today, the former intelligence operative, who fled Dubai last summer in a rubber dinghy, is a wanted man. In June, a Dubai court convicted him in absentia on charges of embezzling $3.8 million and handed down a five-year sentence, plus a big fine. Jaubert, speaking recently at his new home near West Palm Beach, Fla., said he stole nothing and vowed never to set foot in Dubai again. He said he fled because of gruesome threats by interrogators to stick needles up his nose and what he described as constantly shifting, and all bogus, accusations relating to bullets, murder and the finances of Dubai World's now-defunct luxury submarine subsidiary.

"If I hadn't escaped, I'd be in the same hell as everyone else," said Jaubert, one of scores of expatriate business people in this gleaming city-state who have been accused of crimes -- and, in some cases, jailed for long periods without being charged.

Jaubert's troubles began two years ago when Dubai's then-booming economy was showing the first faint signs of strain. Local stock and property prices have since swooned, and the tempo of arrests for alleged business misdeeds ranging from a dud check -- a criminal offense here -- to serious fraud has picked up sharply.

Dubai's government declined to comment on Jaubert's allegations of mistreatment. But it has targeted what it sees as dodgy dealmakers and deadbeat debtors, and has declared "no tolerance" of "anybody who makes illegal profits." For many expatriates, however, the crackdown smacks of a hunt for foreign culprits to blame for the sheikdom's sliding economic fortunes.

'It's All a Bit Scary'

A haven of stability in a region of tumult, Dubai is usually a place people flee to, not from. Foreigners, lured by what President Obama in a June speech in Cairo hailed as the "astonishing progress" of this autocratic but vibrant Persian Gulf metropolis, account for more than 90 percent of the population, and 99 percent of private-sector workers.

But a severe economic slump has reversed the flow. Those who came to Dubai seeking fortunes in property, banking and luxury goodies for the rich now face a less alluring prospect -- a prison cell or furtive flight. Only a tiny minority has been picked up by police but, says a longtime foreign resident who runs a company here, "It's all a bit scary. They are looking for people to carry the can." The foreign resident, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, said a British neighbor was picked up last year.

The turbulence is a blow to a place that promoted itself as the Middle East's answer to Hong Kong or Singapore. It is also a setback for Washington, which has for years touted Dubai as a model of a modern, prosperous Muslim land that, though far from democratic, seemed anchored in the rule of law and committed to basic rights.

Among those who have been locked up are a JPMorgan investment banker; American, British and other foreign property developers; a German yachtmaker; and two Australians who worked as senior executives of what was to be the world's largest waterfront development. The gigantic project had been launched by Nakheel, the crisis-battered property arm of Dubai World and builder of Dubai's signature palm-tree-shaped resort islands.

A few have been convicted, mostly for bouncing checks. Those still awaiting trial often waited many months in jail before being charged: The two Australians, for instance, were arrested in January, held in solitary confinement for seven weeks and then finally charged, with fraud-related offences, last month, said their Melbourne lawyer, Martin Amad.

A banker who headed JPMorgan's Dubai office and its Islamic banking business was first jailed in June last year but was charged, also in connection with fraud, only this spring. JPMorgan said the alleged crimes do not relate to his work at the bank, which he joined in 2007 and quit in April this year while in detention.

Some have complained through lawyers of being deprived of sleep, denied food for days and routinely menaced. "We will insert needles into your nose again and again," a security officer can be heard telling Jaubert, the spy turned submarine-maker, on an audio recording, which the Frenchman said was made on his cellphone during an interrogation before he fled. "Do you know how painful it is to have needles put inside your nose repeatedly and then twisted around? Do you think you can resist this kind of pain?"

Jaubert said the interrogation was conducted by two men in long white robes in a bare, windowless room on April 22, 2007, at Dubai's Al Muraggabat Police Station. On the recording, the interrogators described themselves as state security officers, with one warning Jaubert that "we are above the police, we are above the judges. We can keep here you forever."

Dubai's Media Affairs Office said the emirate "prides itself on a well-established system of law and order and judicial fairness." It did not respond to repeated and detailed questions, and said that officials who could "are physically not here."

A Developing Chill

Released unharmed but without his passport, Jaubert, who is married to an American, began to plot his escape. Last summer, four years after he arrived Dubai on a business-class ticket, he slipped away by sea. "They picked the wrong guy," said Jaubert, 53, a former naval officer who, according to a confidential French report, left France's DGSE intelligence service in March 1993. "With my background, I don't need a passport to travel."

The French Consulate in Dubai, which is the business, business and tourism hub of the United Arab Emirates, said it could not comment. France in May opened a naval facility in Dubai's sister sheikhdom, Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital. Western diplomatic missions have mostly avoided public criticism of the legal system.

Dubai is still far more free and more predictable than most of its neighbors, but a chill has taken hold as property values tumble, jobs vanish and businessmen are detained. Tensions long masked by prosperity have burst into full view -- tensions between a foreign majority and locals, known as Emirati; between a city studded with shiny modern skyscrapers, including the world's tallest now in the final stages of construction; and Dubai's antiquated political and legal foundations.

Washington counts the UAE as one of its best friends in the region. U.S. warships dock at Jebel Ali, a huge Dubai port area where Jaubert had his luxury submarine venture, Exomos, which promised rich clients "the ultimate underwater experience." Big U.S. companies, including General Electric, Boeing and Microsoft, have their regional headquarters in Dubai, which has around 20,000 American residents.

These intimate relations include a deal that will allow the UAE to develop a nuclear-power program with U.S. know-how. The relationship came under scrutiny in Washington this year after the release of videos that showed a member of Abu Dhabi's ruling family torturing an Afghan grain dealer he accused of cheating him. Abu Dhabi authorities are investigating.

The number of expatriates jailed in Dubai for alleged economic crimes is not known. The government issues no figures. "All I can say is that it is definitely on the rise," said Samer Muscati, a lawyer with New York-based Human Rights Watch. The main concern, Muscati said, is not that all those arrested are necessarily innocent but that Dubai's legal system is so opaque, fickle and often heedless of due process.

A vivid example of this is the plight of Zack Shahin, an American businessman of Lebanese origin. A former Pepsi-Cola executive who headed a Dubai property company called Deyaar Development, he was arrested in March last year in connection with a corruption probe involving the Dubai Islamic Bank. Shahin was held incommunicado for 16 days and was not charged for over a year. A Web site set up by his family in the United States alleged that Shahin had been tortured, and it pleaded for his release. The UAE blocked the Web site. U.S. diplomats asked that the case be handled in "an expeditious and transparent manner," and complained that a delay in granting access to Shahin violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

Early this summer, it looked as if Shahin might finally get his day in court and be allowed to go home to await trial. His family took out an ad praising Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Dubai's ruler, took down the Web site, and scratched together $1.1 million to meet bail. Just as Shahin was about to be released, state security officers arrived and hauled him away for questioning on new charges. He is still in detention. The bail money has not been returned, his lawyers said. Dubai officials said no one was available to comment on the case.

Uneasy Foreigners

Locals have been picked up, too, and some complain of being unjustly detained. But well-connected Emirati rarely spend long in jail for economic crimes. Wary of debtors' prison, a growing number of foreigners simply run away.

Simon Ford, a British entrepreneur, skipped town this summer after his company, a specialty gift service, was hit by the crisis and couldn't pay its bills. He wrote an emotional "letter to the Dubai public" to apologize for bailing out. He acknowledged that he owed money, and said he had fled because Dubai "drives people to make horrible decisions." He promised to pay back creditors.

Jaubert, the ex-French spy, said he fled because he feared getting stuck in Dubai's penal twilight zone. A keen amateur marksman, he was first called in for questioning in 2007 after bullets were found at his submarine company offices. Interrogators told him that someone had been shot in the head and that he might be involved. Jaubert replied that he didn't have a gun: his rifle, which he had declared at Customs, was still stuck at the Dubai airport. His bullets got through.

Security officers accused him of lying. Warning him that Dubai "is not France; there is no democracy here," an interrogator heard on Jaubert's tape threatened to put him "in a cave 300 meters underground, away from the world and your family, and I will keep you there until you tell the truth." Jaubert said authorities later accused him of fraud because "they were just looking for something to nail me with."

Jaubert blamed his woes on pressure on Dubai World to rein in some of the wilder investment projects launched by Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the company's chairman, who had first invited Jaubert to Dubai. "It was a palace struggle over money," Jaubert said.

The Escape

Reached on his cellphone, Sulayem declined to comment. Dubai World's internal audit chief, Abdul Qadar Obaid Ali, said Jaubert and his submarine venture ran into trouble for other reasons: His submarines didn't work, and auditors uncovered evidence of fraud involving overbilling for equipment purchases. Jaubert denied this, saying all the transactions were approved and paid for by Dubai World managers.

Fired from Exomos, the submarine company, and unable to get his passport back, Jaubert hatched an elaborate escape plan. He sent his wife and their two boys to Florida. He had diving equipment shipped out from France -- broken down into small bits to avoid arousing suspicion. Then, using a phony name, he bought a Zodiac dinghy and sailboat. Using Google Earth, he surveyed the UAE coastline for an escape route. He found an isolated beach and arranged for a friend to take the sailboat out into international waters.

On the eve of his escape, the former spy checked into a hotel near the beach, put on his diving equipment and donned a long abaya, the body-covering cloak worn by strictly observant Muslim women. He said he then went down the beach and swam underwater to a nearby harbor, where the only patrol boat in the vicinity was moored. He clambered aboard and sabotaged the fuel line to make sure the craft could not give chase, he said.

Jaubert then set out to sea in the dinghy to the boat his friend had positioned just outside the UAE's territorial waters, and they sailed toward India. After eight days at sea, the pair arrived in Mumbai -- an account corroborated by his traveling companion. With a new passport issued by the French consulate, Jaubert flew to join his wife in Florida, where he is writing a book he has titled "Escape From Dubai."