Zack Shahin has rotted, literally rotten, in a Dubai prison for 15 years.
Bright fluorescent lights are always on in the concrete cell that the US citizen shares with 60 other prisoners. The noisy air conditioning works 24 hours a day. The air is damp, cold, and smells of rotting meat.
Zack sleeps on a plastic mattress with a dirty blanket and clothes that have never been washed. He rarely lets prisoners out of his cells.
His family maintains his innocence.
But Zack, sick, sleep deprived and starving, lost the will to live years ago.
FAMILY MEMBER OF DYING AMERICAN JAILED IN DUBAI BEGS FOR MERCY:
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“He’s rotting away,” Martin Lonergan, a British activist who knew Zack in prison, told Fox News. “If you can imagine a man dying because he’s rotting…they’re cutting pieces out of Zack and he’s dying trying to fight the infection.”
Almost three months ago, Zack’s condition became so serious that he was transferred to a Dubai hospital where he underwent multiple unsuccessful surgeries.
In a last-ditch effort to bring Zack home, his family sent clemency letters to the State Department on November 23. The Shahins went back and forth with State Department officials for nearly two weeks, reviewing their letters until they were finally forwarded to the United Arab States. Emirates on December 6.
The Shahins didn’t know it, but the US was simultaneously negotiating the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner, which the UAE helped facilitate.
“They completely abandoned us… they completely pushed us aside,” Ramy Shahin, Zack’s son, told Fox News. “Maybe we’re not newsworthy enough for them, we’re not famous, we’re just an ordinary family, and they just dumped us.”
‘They just shot it down’
Zack, a Lebanese who moved to Texas when he was five, worked as a Pepsi truck driver in Houston. Over time, he worked his way up to become a company executive.
In 2004, Zack was recruited by the United Arab Emirates by Mohammed Khalfan bin Kharbash, the country’s finance minister and president of the Dubai Islamic Bank. He was appointed CEO of a bank-owned property development company, Deyaar. Over the next four years, the $5 million private company grew into a $1.5 billion publicly traded company and the second largest publicly traded real estate company on the Dubai Stock Exchange.
But when Dubai’s ruler died in 2006, the political fallout engulfed bin Kharbash and interrupted Zack’s success, according to his family. He resigned from Deyaar in early March 2008.
On March 23, Zack, then 43, was called into an audit meeting. There, he was kidnapped by state security, Zack’s family said. After 17 days in solitary confinement, he was taken to the police station and arrested on charges of fraud, embezzlement and other financial crimes, crimes that his family says are false and politically motivated.
Zack Shahin, 59, has been illegally detained in a Dubai prison for 15 years for crimes he did not commit, his family said.
(Courtesy of the Shahin family)
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His family said he was detained for 13 months before formal charges were brought against him. In addition to a short bail release, Zack spent the next nine years in jail before finally being talked down to in 2017. He was sentenced to 49 years, which did not include time served.
His family insists that he is innocent. The Big Four global accounting firms audited Deyaar during Zack’s years as CEO and found no financial losses or evidence of the financial crimes he was accused of, according to the Shahins.
“My dad is an ordinary American who started working hard to make a name for himself,” Ramy told Fox News. “He took this small real estate company and turned it into what it became and built a lot of what Dubai is known for. And then they just tore it down.”
‘My dad has no hope’
Now 58, Zack is the longest-serving American white-collar prisoner abroad, according to Detained International, a British organization that provides pro bono legal services to prisoners.
Various organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Detained International, and the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, have tried to raise awareness of Zack’s imprisonment over the years, but have received no response from the US government.
“I’m going to keep fighting until I get out,” Ramy said. “And if I fail, so be it. But I’ll never let it go.”
Zack’s mental and physical health has deteriorated greatly while in prison. His family said he won’t survive much longer.
(Courtesy of the Shahin family)
Zack suffers from a series of health problems, including an infection in his lungs and rotting meat and skin sores. The Shahins suspect that his condition is worse than they think, as they have never seen his medical records.
Lonergan, the Brit who met Zack while he was in jail, likened prison to a dungeon.
“It’s where they push you to be forgotten,” he said.
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Lonergan, who works for Detained International, spent 10 months incarcerated with Zack beginning in 2020. He first noticed the American through the bars of his own cell across the hall. Despite the severity of Zack’s physical ailments, Lonergan said his mental health is “much, much worse.”
“I had conversations with Zack, and there are moments where you can see a flash of light in his eyes when he talks about his story,” Lonergan said. “Most of what I’ve discovered is from research from when I got out.”
“Never in my life have I witnessed such injustice,” he added.
The Shahins had some hope after President Biden signed an executive order in July that strengthened an existing hostage recovery law. He ordered US agencies to communicate more with the families of Americans illegally detained abroad and allow their captors to face sanctions.
Martin Lonergan, who spent 279 days in a Dubai prison with Zack, said he lost a third of his body weight and developed a heart condition due to the inhumane conditions.
(Courtesy of Martin Lonergan)
However, his request to defend Zack under the law, the Levinson Act, was denied within five days.
“I think the Biden administration and the State Department should look at our case and treat it with a little more respect,” Ramy told Fox News. “Because they haven’t even given us any of that.”
Ramy was 14 years old when his father was jailed. Now 30, he talks to his father on the phone every few days.
“My dad is hopeless,” he said. “It hurts every time I talk to him because he lost hope a long time ago. He’s a shell of who he used to be.”
News of his condition prompted Zack’s family to make a last plea for clemency to the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.
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“All we want is mercy,” Zack’s sister-in-law, Aida Dagher, told Fox News. “Someone please move. Let this guy fly to the medical center in Houston, close to his family, where he can have the rest of his life.”
Zack’s son Ramy said the entire family is still “broken” over his father’s incarceration.
(Courtesy of the Shahin family)
The State Department repeatedly asked the Shahins to tone down the rhetoric in their clemency letters, emails provided to Fox News show. Two days after the letters were sent, news broke about the involvement of the United Arab Emirates in Griner’s release.
“My dad’s situation was inconvenient for the United States,” Ramy told Fox News. “When they were working with the United Arab Emirates and Russia to negotiate Brittney Griner’s release, I feel like they thought, ‘Let’s not mention Zack Shahin as we work to get her out of it because she might not be okay with them.'”
“Delaying the letters and waiting for them for days and weeks while the United Arab Emirates was obviously helping the United States to negotiate the release of Brittney Griner, it’s obvious that the department did not want to antagonize the United Arab Emirates during this diplomatic process,” Lonergan said.
The family also said the close relationship between the US and the United Arab Emirates further discourages the US from defending Zack.
Zack Shahin still has more than 40 years left on his sentence. His family said they don’t expect him to survive beyond the next few weeks.
(Courtesy of the Shahin family)
A State Department spokesperson told Fox News that they are in regular contact with the Shahins and will continue to monitor Zack’s case and “provide all appropriate consular assistance.”
“We have no higher priority than the safety of US citizens abroad,” the spokesperson said. “We take our commitment to helping American citizens abroad seriously and are providing all appropriate assistance.”
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After 15 years and three presidential administrations with little to no action, the family still suffers from Zack’s absence every day.
“We’re all broken,” Ramy said. “I look at my mom and she’s empty…she can’t function.”
“I try to pretend and act strong for my family and my dad, but I feel like I lost a part of me when he went in there,” she added.
To view the full interview with Ramy, Lonergan and Dagher, click here.
