A four-metre barbed-wire fence runs by means of the desert on the UAE‑Omani border. Within the early hours of 17 February 2021, Albert Douglas, 58, a British businessman, was creeping alongside it, on the lookout for a method by means of. Douglas, who cuts a slight determine, wears spectacles and has a broad, earnest smile, by no means anticipated issues to return to this. He’d been pressured to desert his dwelling on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, the tree-shaped archipelago lined with upmarket residences, and go into hiding. Normally he’d be driving round in a Rolls-Royce, now he was in a pickup truck, being chauffeured by folks smugglers. They’d transported him to the sting of the Al Ain border, which neighbours Oman, within the lifeless of the evening. It was unbelievable, actually, how briskly the life he as soon as led may evaporate. All that mattered now was attending to the opposite aspect of that fence.
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