I was raped in Dubai prison cell and saw a man tortured to death by having his throat stamped on: Brit who spent 22 months locked up in ‘desert hellhole’ warns people to NEVER go there and describes terrifying ordeal

A Brit who spent 22 months locked up in a ‘desert hellhole’ prison in Dubai has described his terrifying ordeal – warning people to never go there.

David Haigh, the ex-managing director of Leeds United, has claimed he was raped while on the floor in his cell and saw a man tortured to death by having his throat stamped on.

The abuse Haigh says he faced included being punched, tasered, hit with a broom handle and torched during his incarceration at Bur Dubai police station.

The then football boss was accused of channeling money into his own accounts by the club’s Dubai-based owners – a charge he continues to label trumped-up.

He said his shocking experience could have been repeated in the recent high-profile case of Irish air hostess Tori Towey, who was threatened with jail for drinking alcohol and trying to take her own life, after having allegedly suffered domestic abuse. She has since returned to Ireland after being freed to travel home.

Now Mr Haigh has spoken to MailOnline to reveal how his experience in Dubai’s prisons left him suffering from PTSD, nightmares and flashbacks.

David Haigh (pictured in 2016), the ex-managing director of Leeds United, claims he was raped while on the floor in his cell and saw a man tortured to death by having his throat stamped on

A British man, Karl Williams (pictured) previously claimed he saw men torn apart by knife-wielding inmates, while others were forcibly infected with HIV during his time in the hellish Dubai prison

The food given to inmates in Dubai prisons is also often low quality  

After spending 22 months locked up in Dubai, Mr Haigh has labelled it a ‘desert hellhole’ and warned people to never go there

Mr Haigh has spoken to MailOnline to reveal how his experience in Dubai’s prisons left him suffering from PTSD, nightmares and flashbacks. Pictured at the end of 2014

He said: ‘I went from running a football club to lying on the floor of a prison cell being raped.

‘When I heard them say ‘We kill Brits here’ I just thought it was them trying to scare me.

‘I saw someone who was killed in front of me because he was being tortured – they dragged him to one area and I could hear them beating him and they brought him back and he fell down next to me and they stood on his throat.’ 

When asked about why the police carried out the alleged torture methods, Mr Haigh said: ‘To get confessions. Some of them use it because they are evil people and because they can, they take them out to the desert, put a bag over their head, put a gun to their head and they do it for sadistic fun.’

He was arrested in May 2014 after flying to the UAE for a meeting with the club’s former owners Gulf Financial House (GFH) in Dubai.

Mr Haigh, who led the negotiations for GFH’s takeover of Leeds United in 2012 from businessman Ken Bates, believed the meeting was about setting up a private equity investment house.

The abuse Mr Haigh said he faced included being punched, tasered, hit with a broom handle and torched during his incarceration at Bur Dubai police station. Pictured prior to arrest

Mr Haigh, who led the negotiations for Gulf Financial House (GFH) in Dubai to takeover Leeds United in 2012 from businessman Ken Bates, was accused of fraud. Pictured: Leeds United celebrate 100 years of history at Elland Road in 2019

But instead he was confronted by a local police officer who accused him of an irregularity with a cheque.

He was then taken to a police station where he attempted to repay the small amount of money owed – but then found himself locked up on a false charge.

Haigh said that the conditions of his cell were filthy with raw sewage leaking onto the floor.

He said: ‘Unsanitary doesn’t do it justice, there isn’t any toilet paper. The food you get has no nutritional value – they wouldn’t give it to animals here. When I was there we believed it was drugged with some chemical to subdue people

‘The toilets are just buckets outside filled with dirty water with flies around which you have to scoop out with your hands

‘There is no toilet to sit on, there are holes in the floor, no cleaning fluids provided because they can be used for poison

‘There are five or six times more people in it than there should have been.’  

Mr Haigh, then chief executive officer of Leeds United, looks on during a Championship match between Yeovil Town and Leeds United at Huish Park on February 8, 2014

But Mr Haigh is not the only Western tourist or ex-pat who has been locked up alongside dangerous criminals in unsanitary, cramped cells.

In many cases it has been claimed that prisoners in Dubai are not charged but are instead forced to confess to a crime while in custody. 

Conditions in the jails were brought sharply into focus after it emerged that Irish air hostess Tori Towey could have faced the inside of a prison cell this week.

Travel restrictions on her have since been lifted allowing her to return home following frantic diplomatic efforts. 

Mr Haigh has now revealed about how Ms Towey escaped ‘horrors that I don’t think anyone reading this will understand’.

He said: ‘It’s degrading for the men but even more so for the women – they are kept separate from the men but they are in the same jail, just in the next building

‘I tried to take my own life when I was there, if you push that you are suicidal you will end up in a very bad mental institution, even worse than the jail, you are treated as if you are a criminal

Tori Towey was left stranded in Dubai after being faced with an attempted suicide charge – but has now seen travel restrictions on her lifted

Mr Haigh has now revealed about how Ms Towey escaped ‘horrors that I don’t think anyone reading this will understand’. Pictured: A policeman enters Dubai’s Al-Awir central prison in the United Arab Emirates

‘The process that she would have to go through, even if she was mentally strong, is horrendous.’

Mr Haigh also spoke about how the legal system in Dubai seems to be stacked in the man’s favour, with police officers choosing to believe them over women.

He told the Sun Ms Towey was ‘lucky’ to be released as quickly as she was.

‘I’d say 90 per cent of people in Dubai are unknowingly breaking the law and when there’s an issue the law comes at you.

‘Each day that goes by there are Brits and other nationalities locked up in Dubai that shouldn’t be there but can’t get out because the justice system is corrupt.

‘I was imprisoned 10 years ago and I believe I’d be dead or still in there now if I didn’t run a football club and had a high profile.’

Mr Haigh told MailOnline his advice to those looking to travel to Dubai would be to ‘just don’t go’. 

He said: ‘There are thousands of other Brits and westerners in those jails now, so many and so many other nationalities

‘People need to wake up to what Dubai is really like, it’s a hellhole.

‘I lived there for 10 years in an absolute bubble, you get drawn in and start believing the lies.

‘I started to see the reason that I can afford the cleaner four times a week was because she was treated like a slave, the human cost of the nice life that I have. 

A doctor shows a hallway at the medical centre of Al-Awir prison during the Covid pandemic

‘The fool’s paradise that they live in is anything other than a paradise.’

After he got back from Dubai in March 2016, he spent seven months in hospital trying to recover from the horrors of prison. 

In his first interview the month after he was released, Mr Haigh said: ‘They take me to a room at the side. They keep me waiting for an hour, then another hour, and then a lady came in and said: ‘Did you take 23 million?’.

‘I said ‘what do you mean?’ She said: ‘GFH. 23 million. Where is it?’.

‘I had gone from running a football club, to having stomach surgery, to getting on a plane, to landing, to sitting in a police station, being whacked in the face by some dodgy police guy wearing a green uniform, shouting at me in Arabic ‘where is the money?”

Mr Haigh was told he wasn’t getting bail and was led down a corridor into a cramped detention centre without any further explanation of the charges against him.

‘I will never forget, the smell got so bad as you walked towards the door where they were going to put you in. It was horrific, a mixture of everything you don’t want to smell in your life.

They opened this iron door and pushed me in, and slammed it shut. There were no papers, or ‘this is what you have been accused of’ – that was it.’

During his time in a hot, dirty prison cell where sewage was leaking everywhere Haigh said he was denied access to his money and deprived of medicine he needed after his stomach operation.

He claims he was only allowed to speak to his lawyers for two minutes a week and was subjected to and witnessed torture during his time behind bars.

He said: ‘They came and got me in the middle of the night, they took me outside to the car park, then moved me into a room, and then I was quite seriously physically abused, tasered, whacked in the face, made to stand in strange positions, and told repeatedly ‘where is the money?’.

‘I was told if I confessed I could go home. I said I wouldn’t confess, I didn’t do it, you can carry on torturing me.

‘You are surrounded by this depravity. I will never forget, I was sitting there and the police are torturing a guy behind me.

‘I don’t know what he had done, but they had thrown him on the floor, tasering him, kicking him in the head, three or four of them, getting a catapult, putting it on his testicles.

‘The mental anguish that puts you through, that you are under a constant threat of abuse, that continued all the way through.

‘A month before I left where I was recently, I was standing in the corridor waiting to get some painkillers and a guard came and hit me over the head with a broom handle for no apparent reason.’

In 2015 he was found guilty of ‘breach of trust’ by defrauding GFH of £3m by falsifying invoices and diverting money into accounts controlled by him.

Since returning to Britain, Mr Haigh has been spending time with his family in west Cornwall but is in the process of taking legal action over his treatment.

He lost around 40kgs in weight during his incarceration and said the impact on his health has been ‘kind of bad’.

He added: ‘The abuse I suffered, I was punched around, I was hit, I was tasered. People attempted to sexually abuse me.

‘I have a problem with my eyes, you are constantly kept in the dark, the lights are very rarely on, so you can’t see properly, it damages your eyes. Just the unbelievable stress you go through, you are trying to defend yourself and tell the world.’

In a statement about David’s case, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told The Guardian in 2016: ‘Our embassy staff were in almost daily contact with Mr Haigh throughout his detention, and this included regular checks on his welfare.

‘We also regularly raised his case with UAE authorities, letting them know we were following it closely.

‘We take Mr Haigh’s allegations of mistreatment extremely seriously and are setting out our concerns to the UAE authorities. We only raise allegations of mistreatment when we have the individual’s consent to do so.’