A British family stranded in the Middle East after being unfairly refused entry to an evacuation flight from Oman say they have received an apology from the Foreign Office but no real help returning home.
Nusaybah Sattar, 26, from London, was in Dubai with her family to celebrate her brother-in-law’s 40th birthday when the city was attacked by Iranian drones and missiles last Saturday.
Sattar said he heard explosions earlier in the day, but thought it was construction work. “I just realized this could happen anywhere,” he said.
When they realized the truth, the family left the country and made the eight-hour trip to Oman. There, they registered their presence with the UK government and were informed that the Foreign Office was arranging a charter flight to London for British citizens.
The family of six paid more than £1,700 for the tickets, but when they tried to board the flight on Wednesday, Foreign Office ground workers said most of them had not been approved to do so.
They later discovered that Sattar’s 19-month-old child and his 84-year-old grandmother-in-law, who uses a wheelchair, were the only ones allowed to board.
“Those two are the most vulnerable in our group and they need caregivers. They can’t just take a flight alone,” Sattar said.
Sattar’s husband contacted the Home Office, which said they did not have the correct visas to enter the UK. All family members are British citizens and had their UK passports in hand as they tried to board the plane.
Sattar was also told there was a problem with the way his name appeared in the system because he had a different last name before he got married.
“If we had English names, I don’t think there would have been any problems,” he said. “There were other families there that weren’t from our background and it was a lot easier for them to get on the flight.”
With half an hour left before the plane took off, the family had to admit that none of them would be able to board.
The flight, which was the first chartered to bring British citizens back to the UK from the Middle East since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran, was ultimately delayed until Thursday.
The flight was part of a broader evacuation effort that U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called “one of the largest of its kind,” but it still took off without Sattar’s family on board.
More than 140,000 Britons have registered their presence in the Middle East with the Foreign Office, but MPs and British citizens in the Middle East have criticized the pace and scale of the evacuation effort.
The airspace over the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and much of its surrounding area was initially suspended after Iranian attacks targeted Dubai and other major cities in the region, and has since opened in a very limited capacity.
The Ministry of External Affairs later told Sattar’s mother that the entire family had been cleared to board but, according to its records, had not arrived at the airport.
“There are so many different things they’ve been telling everyone and none of them are really true. It’s completely disorganized,” Sattar said.
She added that several Foreign Office staff have since called her and her family to apologize, but have offered no further help.
On Thursday night, the Foreign Ministry’s crisis team could not yet tell the family whether another charter flight would leave Oman, so Sattar and his family made the eight-hour journey back to Dubai to stay with his brother-in-law.
However, on Friday morning, he was told that another evacuation flight would leave Oman later that day, one that he would no longer be able to reach.
Sattar said he no longer has the “physical or financial resources” to make another trip to Oman, having so far spent just under £4,000 on tickets for the charter flight, hotels in Oman and transport to and from Dubai. He added that taxis charged £1,000 per person to flee from Dubai to Oman.
He said his disabled grandmother, a stroke patient who suffers from severe back problems, had run out of essential medicines and that the Foreign Office, despite being at fault, told him it was “not prepared to do anything to help us return”.
He is now pleading with the Home Office to arrange for his family’s safe transportation from Dubai back to Oman and accommodation until the next available evacuation flight, or to secure them seats on a charter plane out of the UAE.
“I used to think the British embassy was a big deal. If you needed help getting back safely to the UK, they would be willing to do it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you have a certain name. You are a British citizen and you will return safely. It is shocking that this has happened.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs have been contacted for comment.
