MERCY DENIED TO JAILED BRITONS IN DRUG MIX-UP

'Al Wuthba prison is a hell hole. I know that even when he gets home, my son
will never be the same again' Tracy McVeigh

The lush desert oasis should have been a perfect holiday destination.
Instead, it has become a prison for two Britons arrested on drug and alcohol
charges and, say their relatives, abandoned to their fate by uncaring
British authorities.

Lynn Majarkas, 44, head teacher of a special needs school, had not had a
holiday in 10 years, so she jumped at the chance to take a last-minute
bargain break in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, with boyfriend Ian
Bamling, 30, the school's welfare official. They flew off in October 1998
but have yet to return.

The couple are now incarcerated in a stinking, overcrowded prison where the
toilet is an open sewer, the food is more often than not infested by
maggots, and floggings are common.

The families of the pair returned to the UK from the UAE in despair last
week, after a fruitless attempt to plead for clemency.

Majarkas and Bamling were arrested at Abu Dhabi airport for possessing a
bottle of duty-free wine, one of gin and three grammes of cannabis, which
warrants no more than a police caution in the UK. But in the Muslim UAE,
where a licence is needed for alcohol and drugs laws are strict, the offence
brought a four and a half years' jail sentence.

The families' options seem to have run out. The Foreign Office will not
intervene in another nation's legal system, even though the prison
conditions have been condemned by Amnesty International as 'inhumane and
degrading'. The British Embassy in Abu Dhabi is equally powerless to help.

Both families, and the parents of Majarkas's former pupils, appealed last
month to Prince Charles, who was on a tour of the UAE. His advisers said it
was a matter for the British Government.

But Bamling's family fear there is a lack of political will because of the
UK's lucrative business relationship with the UAE. In 1998 Britain exported
pounds 1.56 billion of goods and services there, and trade is at record
levels.

The couple were in prison for a year before their conviction two weeks ago.
They got six months for having the alcohol, and four years for drug
trafficking.

They denied the cannabis, worth less than pounds 15, was theirs. Ronald
Magee, Bamling's flatmate in Hounslow, West London, who owned the suitcase
in which the drug was found, sent an affidavit to the court admitting the
cannabis was his. He used it to ease his arthritis and had left it in the
case after his own holiday.

Bamling's mother, Sally Durham, a 52-year-old nurse from West Yorkshire,
told The Observer how she made a desperate tour of the palaces of the
state's sheikhs over several weeks, begging them to use their power to
obtain mercy. 'We were treated very well and still hope for a show of
generosity,' said Mrs Durham. 'I have to respect their laws, but I want to
have my family reunited and this will be a second heartbreaking Christmas
for me.

'Abu Dhabi is like a fairytale place, wealthy with spotlessly clean
streets,' she said. 'Then 45 minutes away in the desert is Al Wuthba jail, a
hell hole where my son rots.'

The prison, built for 800 inmates, houses 3,000. The humidity is
overwhelming as temperatures outside reach 50C (122F). The cell doors cannot
be shut at night because too many bodies are competing for space to sleep on
the cockroach-infested concrete floor. Fellow inmates are regularly flogged
and Bamling has witnessed rape and suicide. The body of a young man who
hanged himself was left to swing in view of other prisoners for several
hours before guards cut him down.

Bamling is suffering from insomnia and malnutrition and his mother fears for
his sanity. Both British prisoners are said to be deeply depressed. 'I know
that even when he gets home, Ian will never be the same again,' she said.

The UAE has a fearsome reputation for rough justice. In recent years things
have got worse, says Amnesty, with floggings given out for speeding and
begging, hand amputations reported for theft, and death sentences for drug
and sex offences.

Richard Bunting of Amnesty said: 'It is a bleak picture and things have been
getting worse. The prison conditions are barbaric, and prisoners have been
stripped and lashed in the courtroom immediately after sentence.'

But the couple's pounds 200 bargain holiday did not come with a warning. The
alcohol laws are confusing - they bought their bottles in the airport's
duty-free shops, yards from where they were arrested, unaware they needed a
licence to do so.

Majarkas has resigned from the job that she was devoted to at Bedelsford
School in Kingston-upon-Thames, south-west London, aware that it may be 2004
before she can come home.

The day after she was sentenced, her 70-year-old mother, Gladys Barr,
visited her in the prison. 'I'm just in shock,' her daughter told her,
before being led away at gunpoint.

'I can say I aged 20 years in one day. I walked from the court like an old
woman.'