A British man who has been stranded in Malaysia for more than two months after his passport was confiscated over a £1.27 parking fee has branded the south-east Asian country ‘a hell hole with no human rights’.
Ahmed Hadi, a 47-year-old electrician from London, was arrested and imprisoned three days arriving in Malaysia with his wife, Lucy, and two daughters on December 4.
Mr Hadi said his ordeal began when a payment machine refused to accept either of his cards as he and his family attempted to leave a car park in Batu Ferringhi, a beach resort on the island state of Penang, off Malaysia’s north-west coast.
Unable to pay the charge of seven Malaysian ringgits, he pressed a button to request assistance but claims a 10-minute conversation with parking officials failed to yield a solution.
With no staff present to assist, Mr Hadi said he gently lifted the plastic barrier only for it to ‘cave in like paper’. Two days later he received a telephone call ordering him to attend a police station, where he was questioned for two hours about breaking the barrier.
‘The whole thing was ridiculous from the start,’ said Mr Hadi, who was subsequently arrested and required to appear in court. ‘I was willing to pay, but they couldn’t take the money and wouldn’t let me out.
‘There was no other way out, it was quite annoying and ridiculous. I was gentle with the barrier, but it just caved in like paper.’
The day after his arrest, Mr Hadi appeared in court. When police were granted more time to investigate the alleged offence, his wife called the British consulate, securing the services of a solicitor.
She paid three guarantors to bail her husband at a cost of about £2,240 and a further £1,000 to the solicitor, who met with the car park owner in early January and agreed a £180 fee to cover repair costs.
‘I thought we’d sorted everything out, but I still don’t have my passport or any idea when or if I’ll get it back,’ said Mr Hadi. ‘Malaysia is a hell hole with no human rights.
‘The conditions were awful in the cells: 50 people sharing one toilet. One of the police threatened to beat me up.
‘We think Britain is broken, but this makes you realise how good we have it. This country is a rip off and you’re not free.’
The family left the UK in August, spending three months in Thailand before travelling to Malaysia at the beginning of December. He has remained there since and is due to appear in court again on February 17 for reasons that, he says, remain unclear.
‘We considered living here before this, but there’s no way – it’s inhumane,’ said Mr Hadi. ‘When I was arrested, nobody read me my rights. I was moved to a different cell every day.
‘Lucy had no idea where I was or what was happening.’
His wife, a business owner, took aim at Malaysia’s authoritarian regime.
‘Ahmed is British but also from Kuwait, so they just kept saying “He’s a rich man,”‘ she said
‘It’s basically a police state, there’s no freedom of speech. They just arrest you for anything, and they do it to make money.’
The British embassy in Malaysia did not respond to a request for comment.
