A BRITISH grandad and veteran suffering from cancer has been left homeless and starving in Dubai after being arrested for a crime he’d been acquitted of a decade earlier.
John Murphy, who served in the British military before building a life in the UAE, was arrested a decade earlier over allegations of being offensive to hotel security.
The 59-year-old’s lawyers said he should have walked free but he was jailed awaiting trial.
In the interim period, John’s landlord sued him for rent arrears that piled up during his detention.
His belongings were seized, a travel ban imposed, and his passport withheld.
The travel ban imposed on him has also never been lifted.
For nearly 10 years he has been trapped in Dubai, unable to work and unable to leave, putting John in an ‘inescapable legal limbo’.
John’s lawyers now say he has been ‘literally starving’.
The grandfather has been forced to sleep on public transport and wash in shopping centre toilets, according to his legal contacts.
“I haven’t eaten in four days,” Murphy said in a message sent from Dubai.
“I’ve been on the streets for three weeks.
“I try to ride the metro all day to rest, but security chase me away.
“I wash in mall toilets, I’ve been in the same clothes for weeks, and my health is failing.
“I need urgent cancer treatment and dental care, but I have nowhere to turn.”
Despite homelessness being illegal in the UAE, when John attempted to surrender to the police, they refused to arrest him.
He has been surviving on public transport, caught between a rock and a hard place – unable to leave, unable to work, unable to resolve his debts.
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Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai said John’s situation was “outrageous”.
“John was found innocent, yet ten years later he is starving on the streets, denied cancer treatment, food, or shelter,” she said.
“This is the direct result of a system that criminalises debt and traps people in a cycle of poverty and despair.
“They won’t let him leave, and they won’t even arrest him. He is being left to die in plain sight.”
A friend of John’s has launched a GoFundMe page and appealed directly to both the British and Irish embassies for help.
To date, neither has secured his release.
“The Trump administration successfully repatriated a number of American citizens from the UAE,” Stirling added.
“It is disappointing that Britain and Ireland have not stepped in to save John Murphy.
“He is a veteran, a grandfather, and he has already suffered enough.
“The Irish and British governments must act now.”
John’s quagmire comes after British student Mia O’Brien was detained in the city after being busted with 50g of cocaine.
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Mia was sentenced to spend 25 years in a UAE prison after she was found with the drugs that had a street value of £2500.
Her family this week issued a plea for help saying she had “never done a bad thing in her life” and had made a “very stupid mistake”.
But now her heartbroken mum Danielle McKenna, 46, has revealed new details about her lengthy jail term.
She revealed that Mia, 23, was caught with 50 grams of the Class A drug in the Middle East last October.
The huge amount of cocaine was found inside Mia’s apartment in “one big chunk”.
The Liverpool University law student was arrested alongside two other people – her friend and the friend’s boyfriend.
All three have been charged with drug dealing.
Mia was convicted by a judge after a one day hearing on July 25.
She was also fined a staggering £100,000 by the court before being sent to the hellish Dubai Central Prison, also known as Al-Awir.
The notorious lock-up has been dubbed the affluent city’s version of infamous jail Alcatraz.
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“Mia feels she has destroyed her life as she wanted to be a lawyer or solicitor, ” Danielle told the Daily Mail.
“I speak to her but she can’t say too much on the phone.
“She’s just made a stupid mistake after going over to see a friend and her boyfriend in Dubai.”
The mother-of-five said Mia pleaded not guilty to intent to supply the drugs.
But the judge swiftly ended the trial and handed her a life sentence of which she has to serve 25 years.
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