
Jo Malone accused of ‘whitewashing' Dubai's human rights abuses
Amnesty International said the fragrance entrepreneur 's stance was 'deeply troubling' after she appeared to say there was little difference between living in the Middle Eastern city and in the UK or US.
Malone, 61, moved to Dubai in 2021 with her husband, Gary Willcox, after becoming 'disillusioned' with Britain.
Since then, she has lived in the suite of a five-star hotel in the Middle Eastern city and described Sheikh Mohammed, its ruler, as ' the most wonderful leader '.
Amnesty International has condemned her comments, saying public figures have 'a responsibility to speak truthfully about human rights'.
The charity told The Telegraph: 'While individuals are free to relocate as they see fit, defending the United Arab Emirates' human rights record is deeply troubling.
'The UAE has an appalling track record of silencing dissent, arbitrarily detaining critics, and violating migrant workers' rights.
'Glossing over these realities not only ignores the suffering of countless people but risks legitimising repression.
'Public figures have a responsibility to speak truthfully about human rights - not to help whitewash abuses.'
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Malone appeared to dismiss the abuses that have taken place and said you have to respect the fact 'you are in someone else's country'.
'I believe every person has the right to be whoever they want to be, but you think the UK has got everything right, and the US has got everything right?' she said.
'Honestly, you tell me a place you can go and live where you can tick every box 100 per cent.'
Malone – who is estimated to be worth £15 million – and her husband are enjoying a 10-year golden visa, which allows them to stay in the UAE, where there is no personal income or inheritance tax.
'It is probably the happiest I've ever been in my life,' she said, adding that she couldn't see herself returning to Britain.
She said she had become 'disillusioned' with the tax system in the UK, with little to show for it when 'you take [family] to hospital and you're waiting three days on a trolley'.
However, Dubai has been at the centre of several high profile human rights abuses.
In one of them, property developer Ryan Cornelius was arrested over an alleged £370 million fraud in 2008, held in solitary confinement and subsequently found guilty.
The 71-year-old, who denies wrongdoing over a loan secured with the Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), has languished behind bars for 16 years.
The father of three's original 10-year sentence was extended by 20 years in 2011, with the UAE insisting he had a fair trial and that he had not repaid money to the bank.
The United Nations has said the charges of fraud are false and called for his immediate release.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


BBC News
23 minutes ago
- BBC News
US to remove Syria's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham from list of foreign terrorist groups
The US is set to take the Syrian Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) off its list of foreign terrorist organisations on Tuesday, according to a state department memo. The group led a rebel offensive in December that toppled the Assad regime, which had ruled Syria for 54 years. Its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is now the country's interim also known as al-Nusra Front, was previously al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria until al-Sharaa severed ties in 2016. In recent months, Western countries have sought to reset relations with Syria - which has faced heavy sanctions aimed at the old regime. In late June, Trump signed an executive order to formally end US sanctions against the country, with the White House saying the move was intended to support its "path to stability and peace".It added it would monitor the new Syrian government's actions including "taking concrete steps toward normalising ties with Israel" as well as "addressing foreign terrorists" and "banning Palestinian terrorist groups".Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani said the move would "lift the obstacle" to economic recovery and open the country to the international Friday, Syria said it was willing to cooperate with the US to reimplement a 1974 disengagement agreement with the weekend, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Syria - the first government minister to do so in 14 met with al-Sharaa and announced an additional £94.5m support package - aimed at supporting longer-term recovery and countries helping Syrian UK earlier lifted sanctions on Syria's defence and interior ministries. Ninety percent of Syria's population were left under the poverty line when the Assad regime was ousted after 13 years of devastating civil has promised a new Syria, but there are concerns within the country about how the new government is operating - with some suspicious of his radical past. Only one female government minister has been appointed to date - and al-Sharaa has made almost every other appointment directly. There have also been multiple violent attacks against minority groups in recent months. In March, hundreds of civilians from the minority Alawite sect were killed during clashes between the new security forces and Assad-loyalists. In April there were deadly clashes between Islamist armed factions, security forces and fighters from the Druze religious minority. And in June at least 25 people were killed in a suicide attack on a church in Damascus.


Daily Mail
25 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Iran's president admits nuke facilities WERE 'severely damaged' in US military strikes and claims in interview with Tucker Carlson that Israel tried to assassinate him in 12-day war
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said that Tehran's facilities were 'severely damaged' in military strikes launched by the US and that Israel had attempted to assassinate him. The remarks came less than a month after Israel launched its unprecedented June 13 bombing campaign against Iran, killing top military commanders and nuclear scientists. Spaking to US media figure Tucker Carlson in an interiew which aired on Monday, Pezeshkian said that American strikes on Iran were 'illegal', and that the country had never intended to develop a nuclear bomb. He added that the Israeli attacks took place two days before Tehran and Washington were set to meet for a new round of nuclear talks, stalling negotiations that were aimed at reaching a deal over Iran's atomic programme. However, he said that US strikes damaged pieces of equipment and facilities, and 'therefore we don't have any access to them'. The Iranian president also claimed that Israel tried to kill him by bombing an area where he was holding a meeting, but said they 'failed'. 'They did try, yes. They acted accordingly, but they failed,' Pezeshkian told Carlson. 'It was not the United States that was behind the attempt on my life. It was Israel. I was in a meeting... they tried to bombard the area in which we were holding that meeting,' he said according to a translation of his remarks from Persian, in apparent reference to an alleged assassination attempt during the recent war. More than 900 people were killed in Iran during the conflict, according to the judiciary. The Israeli attacks drew waves of retaliatory drone and missile fire, killing 28 people in Israel, according to authorities. The 12-day war between Iran and Israel saw it, along with the United States, launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz. A ceasefire between Iran and Israel took hold on June 24. On June 16, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not rule out plans to assassinate Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying it would 'end the conflict' after reports emerged at the time that US President Donald Trump had vetoed the move. During the war, Iranian authorities also said an Israeli plot to kill Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was foiled. In the interview with Carlson, Pezeshkian accused Netanyahu of pursuing his 'own agenda' of 'forever wars' in the Middle East and urged the United States not to be dragged into it. 'The US administration should refrain from getting involved in a war that is not America's war, it is Netanyahu's war,' he said. An exterior view shows damage at a residential building in the Saadat Abad neighborhood of Tehran that was struck by an Israeli attack on June 13 Mourners stand next to the coffin of Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami (front), and other military commanders killed during Israeli strikes on the first day of the war, during their funeral procession at Enqelab Square in the capital Tehran on June 28, 2025. Iran began a state funeral service on June 28 He added that his country has 'no problem' restarting nuclear talks, provided that trust can be reestablished between the two countries. 'We see no problem in re-entering the negotiations,' the Iranian president said. 'There is a condition ... for restarting the talks. How are we going to trust the United States again?' 'We re-entered the negotiations, then how can we know for sure that in the middle of the talks the Israeli regime will not be given the permission again to attack us.' Pezeshkian added that Iran would be open to US investments should sanctions on Tehran be lifted. 'There is no limitation and nothing preventing the US investors to come to Iran and to make investments in Iran.' Pezeshkian also warned that the US has two ways in front of it for dealing with Iran and the region: peace or war. 'US President Mr. Trump is capable enough to guide the region towards peace and a brighter future and put Israel in its place or get into an endless pit or swamp and that is a war that Netanyahu wants the US or its president to be dragged into.'


Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Tim Franks: How I realised that being Jewish really does affect my Middle East reporting at the BBC
This should not be about me. I understand that. The turmoil in the Middle East that we are witnessing – partially witnessing – supersedes anything of interest about me and my convictions. That should always be true of BBC journalists. But as philosophers have pointed out: Jews can be useful to think with. So this is one Jew's attempt to be useful. On one level, it's dead easy. All BBC journalists know the price of entry: when you come to work, you leave your proclivities at the door. That's the blood oath, tattooed across our chests. What I have come to realise, in a selectively quotable phrase that will be catnip to the conspiracists, is that my Jewishness is informing my journalism. And, perhaps more strangely to some, my journalism is informing my Jewish identity. This, I grant, is a change. These are words I never thought I'd think, let alone utter. What's changed is that I've changed. Back in 1944, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a short book on anti-Semitism. It's at times brilliantly incisive, at others clankingly off. One of his more penetrating observations is that Jews can be 'over-determined'. He meant that their motives are always under scrutiny. And that, in itself, can be disabling: Jews can feel trapped in the cage of others' preconceptions. When I started my tour of duty as the BBC's Middle East correspondent almost 20 years ago, I was extremely dubious about the gig. I felt profoundly unprepared and ignorant. Up to that point, I hadn't really tried to navigate the raging currents of opinion across the region; I'd just tried to bypass them. Even if, somehow, I could reach a point where I might think myself sufficiently well-informed, could I trust my subconscious tendencies? Lots of people very publicly offered their own answers to this question even before I took up the role. They said that it was inevitable I'd be biased one way or another, tilting the balance either for good or for ill. Or that I was on a mission impossible: trying to occupy simultaneous states of Jew and journalist. In 2008 I was a year or so into my posting and hoovering down lunch at the back of our old, scruffy bureau on Jaffa Street. I heard screaming outside and looked out of the third floor window. A front-loader tractor appeared to have hit a bus. A moment later, it was clear it was no accident. I watched the tractor reverse and then smash back into the bus, so that it tipped over. A colleague and I raced down the stairs and out onto the street. We pursued the tractor, against the fleeing crowds, as it careened into, and even over, cars and pedestrians. Eventually, a passer-by managed to climb on to the outside of the cab and shoot the driver at point-blank range. We filmed the killing, close up. Back in the bureau, I drew breath and started broadcasting. 'So Tim,' asked one presenter down the line from London. 'Was this terrorism?' 'I don't know if the man in that tractor cab belonged to a militant group,' I said. 'But what I can say is that what just happened on the street outside sowed terror among those who were there.' So far, so unexceptional. Except that within hours, there was both condemnation that the BBC – that I – had failed to call it 'terrorISM', and also condemnation that we were giving this one deadly incident disproportionate airtime because it happened to take place on our doorstep. In other words, I was taking flak from both sides. For my critics the report simply added to what, in their minds, was the substantial body of evidence that – as they took pains to tell me – I was either a self-hating Jew with obvious political proclivities, or, in the message from one listener, a hook-nosed parasite erupting from the bowels of honest journalism. I was more than willing to engage with audience criticism of what I was covering and how I was covering it. Often there could be a reasonable doubt to address – a context I had failed to make clear, a shorthand that had been too short. But often that criticism had first to be picked out of a slagheap of causation: that my choice of words, the story I had chosen to report had betrayed my filthy prejudices. In response, I chose simply to deflect, not to engage, to meet the rage with a neutral glance. As far as I was concerned, my Jewishness and my journalism were like two sets of kosher cutlery: one for the meat, one for the milk; different drawers, never mixed – and that was vital, given the toxic brew of identity politics, blood-letting in the Middle East, and boiling fury over the BBC. This strategy seemed to work, at least for me, then and in the years since, as I repeatedly returned to the region, and in my current role as presenter of Newshour, the main news and current affairs programme on the BBC World Service. Recently, however, I've had a revelation: I've been deluding myself. This revelation came as I scuffed away at a hitherto unknown family history. As I discovered forebears of mine scattered across centuries and continents, the reporter within me started to interrogate them, and the Jew within me realised I was no dispassionate observer. Why had cousin Diz – you may know him as Benjamin Disraeli – apparently faked his familial back-story so that, outrageously, my rather more mundane family line had not been included in his genealogy? What did it say about the place of Jews in the lands where they have settled, and the evergreen lure of fantasies about Jewish power? In an 1890s political pamphlet Abraham Mendes Chumaceiro (pictured above on a stamp) wrote: 'Where is it written that all Jews think the same?' And while it was quite right that, decades after his unremarked death, another cousin – Abraham Mendes Chumaceiro – was celebrated for his championing of black civil rights with a bust, a stamp and a street-name, I found myself drawn to a throwaway sentence he wrote in an 1890s political pamphlet: 'Where is it written that all Jews think the same?' That remains a question for the ages. I have always known that I am blessed that I do a job I love in a country where I can openly practise my faith. It's a given that neither was always the case for my ancestors from Lisbon to Amsterdam, from Lithuania to Curaçao. But unshrouding this family history made me see that what fuels the Jew within me also fuels the journalist within me, and vice versa: the struggle to understand, a sense of injustice, of wonder, of humility about how much we know and how much we are almost certainly getting wrong, and a certain base level of set-jawed bloody-mindedness. So: I'm a Jewish journalist at the BBC, and this is what I think. My job is to be questioning, and self-questioning. It may not be easy. But it is that simple. Tim Franks's book, The Lines We Draw: The Journalist, The Jew And An Argument About Identity, is published by Bloomsbury at £20. To order your copy, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books