Maeve McTaggart

Do they have access to people who can help them?

There is a lot of differing reports, I think, based on people's own experiences there.

Many British nationals in particular, but really a large proportion of the prison population in the Emirates would be non-national, so maybe they wouldn't be native Arabic speakers.

Many people discuss having to sign confessions that are written almost exclusively in Arabic, which is a language they don't understand, they don't read, but perhaps feel a level of pressure to do so.

You know, if they did have access to an interpreter, still the court's process is done largely through Arabic.

The British government, I suppose quite helpfully to the people who may be facing time there, will have provided a list of common words in Arabic that they will be able to translate words like case,

Words like water, just the rough guidelines of ways to kind of get by, I suppose, and to be able to navigate your way through that system.

It would be extremely difficult to do that.

OK, Maeve, thank you very much for bringing us that description of what that Dubai prison is like.

That's Maeve McTaggart from The Independent.