TORTURED to within an inch of his life, Albert Douglas lay beaten and bruised under the heat of the desert sun.
He had been starved of food and water for 72 hours, with a bone protruding from a broken shoulder, when he staggered towards a dirty outside toilet to scoop out a small amount of liquid to quench his thirst.
It was the start of a four-year ordeal in a hellhole Dubai jail which businessman Albert says stripped him of any shred of dignity and left him “feeling less than nothing”.
He had been arrested for financial fraud after simply putting his signature to a piece of paper related to son Wolfgang, who also ran a company in the United Arab Emirates.
But today innocent father-of-four Albert, 63, is back home in Britain after a United Nations intervention meant he was freed in time for Christmas.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, he said: “It was like a nightmare with no end.
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“I didn’t believe I was actually free until the plane was in the air. When I touched down at Heathrow I wanted to kiss the ground.
“I’ve spent a total of five years in jail and I’m determined not to waste a single second of my life now.”
Albert today describes the horror he faced after being severely beaten in a police cell in Abu Dhabi before being transferred to Dubai main prison where he shared a cramped, filthy cell with 14 others.
He witnessed suicides and prisoners being raped, rubbed shoulders with killers, and survived on meagre portions of rice and weak soup.
Tearful Albert said: “There were times when I went to sleep and hoped I wouldn’t wake up the next day. Only thoughts of my family kept me going and stopped me from ending it all.
“I learned not to trust anyone, keep my head down and try to get through. I taught myself to sleep up to 15 hours a day despite the fact the lights were never off.
“Eventually I became part of a small group of friends — some Brits who had been charged with similar offences and have served 16 and 17 years with no hope of freedom.
“I feel this incredible guilt at leaving them behind. I’m free and they are still living this awful reality.”
When we first meet in a hotel restaurant back in the UK, Albert says it feels surreal watching people go about their everyday business against a background of festive trees and twinkling lights.
It is days since his release but under his cardigan and suit jacket, he still wears his prison-issued white joggers and vest.
“I don’t know why I’m still wearing them,” he says sadly. “I think it’s maybe some sort of comfort thing but my daughter will no doubt get me out of them and burn them the minute she can.”
When I got to the fence, I heard shouting and looked down and saw red dots over my clothes. They were the sights of guns trained on me.
Albert Douglas
Albert appears a broken man and looks frail, weighing just 9st 6lb compared to 12st 8lb when he was first incarcerated.
Before his arrest, he enjoyed a life of luxury, driving a Rolls-Royce and living in a £6million mansion on Palm Jumeirah island, where celebrities including David and Victoria Beckham and Brad Pitt own villas.
He made his fortune by cornering the market in wooden flooring in the Gulf after moving 4,500 miles from where to Dubai in 1998.
Son Wolfgang followed him out in 2008 to set up his own flooring firm, Timberwolf.
Albert put his signature on paperwork to help Wolfgang get a trade licence, but the documents were later updated to exclude his name.
Yet when Wolfgang’s business amassed debts, authorities used this to put Albert behind bars in a case the United Nations ruled had “no legal basis”.
Wolfgang was back in Britain when the company got into trouble, but a court found Albert liable and gave him a three-year sentence and fined him £2.5million.
He took the case to appeal and then the country’s supreme court, but when that failed he decided to try to escape the country in February 2021.
With help from contacts, son Wolfgang paid a gang £20,000 to cut a hole in the border fence near Abu Dhabi, but Albert was caught and arrested.
Albert said: “At that time I still believed in the system, that I would be found innocent even in my absence. I thought I would be able to go back home and sort it all out.
“When I got to the fence, I heard shouting and looked down and saw red dots over my clothes. They were the sights of guns trained on me.
“That was the moment I woke up and smelt the coffee.”
A hood was put over Albert’s face, he was pushed into the back of a van and taken to a local police station where he was quizzed by cops and beaten so badly that he lost consciousness. His shoulder was broken and three fingers dislocated.
When he woke, his ears were bleeding, which has resulted in him now being hard of hearing.
He was then placed outside in the baking sun for 72 hours with no food and forced to drink water from an outside toilet.
Makeshift noose
“You never think you’d do anything like that in your life, but at the time I not only did it but was glad of it,” said Alfred.
“I was once a proud man but not so much now.”
He spent eight weeks being moved around various jails and, in one, shared a bunk bed with a young man who was raped every night by guards. “The bed would rock but you couldn’t say anything,” said Albert.
“Your instinct is to step in, but you have to turn a blind eye because it would have been dangerous to get involved.”
In Al Barsha prison, he was on the phone to family when another inmate wound the phone wire around his neck and tried to strangle him to death. Other prisoners stepped in to save him.
Albert was eventually placed in the central Dubai prison, but he spent months being denied medication for a heart problem.
It was nine months before he was given an operation to fix his broken shoulder, which had to be broken again and reset.
As son Wolfgang launched a campaign in Britain to free his dad, putting pressure on the Foreign Office, Albert witnessed scenes that could have come straight from a horror film.
He told The Sun how two young men in the cell next door committed suicide — one from digesting bleach and another who used blankets as a makeshift noose.
Albert added: “Everyone in there talked about taking their own lives. It’s such a depressing place and people have very little chance of getting free.”
Albert was originally jailed for three years, but his sentence was increased when debtors brought civil claims.
I’m talking because I want people to know that the Dubai that Brits are sold is nothing but a lie and the Foreign Office does nothing to help you if it goes wrong,
Albert Douglas
It is clear that Albert finds it difficult to talk about his ordeal, but he hopes his story will raise the profile of similar cases of miscarriages of justice in Dubai.
“I’m talking because I want people to know that the Dubai that Brits are sold is nothing but a lie and the Foreign Office does nothing to help you if it goes wrong,” he said.
“It’s a barbarian, draconian, authoritarian dictatorship. If an American or Canadian is jailed in Dubai, their leaders are straight on the phone, securing their release, but Britain does nothing for their people.”
Wolfgang, who says he has spent millions on legal teams to secure his dad’s release, said: “Dad should never have been in prison. It was a clear miscarriage of justice.
“Dad didn’t even have case files fixed to his case and nobody could explain why.
“It’s been totally corrupt.”
Even though it is against local law, it is common in Dubai for relatives of debtors to be imprisoned in their place, says Radha Stirling, a human rights lawyer and CEO of campaign group Detained In Dubai, who helped Albert’s family.
She said he had been let down by Parliament, ex-Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who failed to get involved in the case, as well as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
She added: “Albert was a successful entrepreneur, and in the UAE success makes you a target. A mere allegation can be enough to put someone in prison, and extortion is commonplace.
“Dubai claims to be a safe, free and modern society, but it was not safe for Albert Douglas, and it has not been safe for thousands of others we have helped.
“The truth of what happened to Albert should disturb anyone being encouraged to do business or invest there.”