A Pakistani businessman who fled the United Arab Emirates...

A Pakistani businessman who fled the United Arab Emirates after being accused of drugs offences lost a court battle against extradition from Britain.
Mohammed Fakhar Al Zaman Lodhi had argued he would suffer racial discrimination, torture and possibly the death penalty if sent back to the UAE to face the courts.
But two High Court judges in London dismissed his challenge to the extradition order, saying that the Dubai judiciary, which is almost entirely made up of expatriate judges, did not treat non-UAE nationals unfairly because of their race or nationality.
"While we have no doubt that there will be occasions when Pakistani prisoners in Dubai jails may encounter less favourable treatment from individual police officers than that accorded to UAE nationals, this is a slender basis for a conclusion that, taken as a whole, their punishment may be significantly more severe," the judges said in their ruling.
The UAE government had sought Lodhi's extradition on five charges relating to the production, possession and supply of drugs, following offences allegedly committed between 1995 and June 1997.
During an initial hearing in July, Lodhi's lawyer said there was "compelling first-hand evidence" that he would suffer prejudice at any trial in the UAE and would be punished in prison because he is foreign and, in particular, Pakistani.
The court was told that flogging, stoning and the death penalty were sentences regularly imposed by the courts and that the UAE had not signed an international covenant setting the "minimum benchmark for international human rights standards worldwide" that has been signed by other mideast countries including Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran and Iraq.