{"id":23294,"date":"2018-11-26T11:22:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T11:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23294"},"modified":"2018-11-26T11:22:56","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T11:22:56","slug":"uae-pardons-briton-jailed-for-spying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23294","title":{"rendered":"UAE pardons Briton jailed for spying"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1411131\/middle-east\" readability=\"59\">\n<p>\nDUBAI: The British national jailed for life in the UAE for spying has been granted a presidential pardon with immediate effect.<\/p>\n<p>\nMatthew Hedges was detained on May 5 and was sentenced to life in prison by a UAE court on Nov. 21, 2018.<\/p>\n<p>\nReacting to the news his wife Daniele Tejada said she \u201ccannot wait to have Matt back home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nDuring the announcement Emirati officials said the arrest was on solid ground and showed video clips in which Hedges described his apparent intelligence work with MI6 &#8211; the British secret service.<br \/>\u201cHe was a part-time PhD researcher, a part-time businessman, but he was a 100-percent a full-time secret service operative,\u201d said Jaber Al-Lamki, an official with the UAE&#8217;s National Media Council.<br \/>\u201cMr Hedges has been found guilty of espionage. He sought out sensitive information he knew had access to it. He was here to steal the UAE\u2019s sensitive national security secrets for his paymasters,\u201d Al-Lamki added.<\/p>\n<p>\nResponding to the announcement British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt described the announcement as \u201cfantastic news.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nAnd he said the British government was grateful to the UAE for resolving the issue in a speedy fashion.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe presidential pardon is one of 785 as part of the UAE National Day celebrations state news agency WAM reported, adding that Hedges would leave the country once formalities were completed.<\/p>\n<p>\n(Developing story)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DUBAI: The British national jailed for life in the UAE for spying has been granted a presidential pardon with immediate effect. Matthew Hedges was detained on May 5 and was sentenced to life in prison by a UAE court on Nov. 21, 2018. Reacting to the news his wife Daniele Tejada said she \u201ccannot wait&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}