Maeve McTaggart

You can potentially have it cut short, withdrawn, etc.

Often the telephone calls in a particular warning that I think is probably quite stark is that all prisoners access to phone calls within a block can be withdrawn just to punish one single prisoner for their own behavior.

So somebody, if there's a misdemeanor, the whole block loses their access to the phone.

OK.

And you mentioned overcrowding there.

So that obviously breeds problems as well.

Are there issues around violence?

Yes, particularly.

And I think that's where a lot of the descriptions around describing it as akin to Alcatraz, describing it as a hellhole, people have described really quite traumatising experiences, not only having to endure particular levels of violence in the prison.

but also having to witness it being done to others, whether it's by other inmates or whether it's by prison guards.

You know, one account from a British national, Carl Williams, he was kept in the prison for a year for drug charges a few years ago.

He's where that quote, the Dubai version of Alcatraz, comes from.

He described being electrocuted with an electric cattle prod by authorities, witnessing stabbings in the prison.

His accounts, which are described in a very detailed memoir, have been rejected by the Emirati authorities.

He really paints a really stark account of witnessing such levels of extreme violence between inmates where guards just observe us and won't intervene.

So there's a real high level of danger which people afterwards, this level of trauma doesn't end once you're kind of released through the gates of this prison and you might find your way at home in the UK or in Ireland.

It really...

can continue on psychologically based on maybe what you've seen within the walls.

And what about assistance when it comes to, I mean, we would have human rights assistance here when it comes to translators and so on.

Are people given that there?