Ryan Cornelius

International response

Cornelius has maintained that the Dubai Islamic Bank facility financed a legitimate property-development business, rather than a fraud, and that repayments were being met at the time of his 2008 arrest; his account, set out in a 2024 House of Commons debate and a 2025 European Parliament resolution, states that he was held in solitary confinement for about six weeks after his arrest without access to legal counsel.

European Parliament On 10 July 2025, the European Parliament adopted a joint resolution on Cornelius' case (RC-B10-0328/2025) by 511 votes to 50, with 75 abstentions, calling for his immediate and unconditional release. Citing the Working Group's findings, the resolution stated that his imprisonment violated international law for lack of due process, coerced confessions, solitary confinement, denial of legal counsel and the coerced signing of documents in Arabic. It denounced the 2018 extension as a retroactive application of Dubai Law 37 of 2009, noted that the law exempts convicted debtors aged over 70 from imprisonment and that Cornelius had turned 70 in 2024, and demanded that he be granted an enforceable right to compensation. A group of about 15 parliamentarians led by Iain Duncan Smith wrote to the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, calling for action on his behalf, while a separate open letter in support of Cornelius was signed by around 146 parliamentarians. The Foreign Office stated that Lammy had raised Cornelius' case with his UAE counterpart in December 2024.