British family stranded in Middle East after Foreign Office errors | US-Israel war on Iran

A British family stranded in the Middle East after being mistakenly denied entry to an evacuation flight from Oman said they received an apology from the Foreign Office but no real help to return home.

Nusaybah Sattar, 26, from London, was in Dubai with her family to celebrate her brother-in-law’s 40th birthday when Iranian drones and missiles hit the city last Saturday.

Sattar said he heard explosions earlier in the day but thought it was construction work. “It just dawned on me – the fact that this could happen anywhere,” he said.

When they realized the truth, the family left the country and made an eight-hour journey to Oman. There, they registered their assets with the UK government and were informed by the Foreign Office that a charter flight to London was being arranged for British citizens.

The family of six paid more than £1,700 for the tickets, but when they tried to board on Wednesday, Foreign Office ground staff said most of them had not been approved.

They later learned that Sattar’s 19-month-old child and her 84-year-old mother-in-law, who uses a wheelchair, were the only people allowed on the ship.

“These two are the most vulnerable in our group and they need caregivers. They can’t go to the plane on their own,” Sattar said.

Sattar’s husband contacted the Home Office, who said they did not have the correct visas to enter the UK. Every member of the family is a British citizen and they held UK passports when they tried to board the plane.

Sattar was also told that there was a problem with her name appearing in the system because her surname was different before marriage.

“If we had English names, I don’t think there would be a problem,” he said. “There were other families there who weren’t from our background, and it was much easier for them to get on the plane.”

Half an hour before the plane took off, the family had to accept that none of them would be able to board the plane.

The flight, the first to take British citizens back to the UK from the Middle East since US and Israeli attacks on Iran, has been postponed until Thursday.

The flight was part of a wider evacuation effort that British prime minister Keir Starmer described as “one of the largest of its kind” but still departed without Sattar’s family.

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 speed and extent of evacuation efforts.

Airspace over the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and much of the surrounding region was initially suspended following Iranian attacks targeting Dubai and other major cities in the region, and has since been reopened to a very limited capacity.

The State Department later told Sattar’s mother that the family was allowed to board the plane but did not arrive at the airport, records show.

“There are so many different things they tell everyone and none of them are actually true. It’s all so disorganized,” Sattar said.

He added that many State Department employees have since called him and his family to apologize, but they have been unable to offer further assistance.

On Thursday night, the State Department crisis team still could not tell the family whether another charter flight would leave Oman, so Sattar and his family made the eight-hour drive to Dubai to stay with his brother-in-law.

But on Friday morning, he was told that another evacuation flight would depart from Oman later the same day; he would no longer be able to make this flight.

Sattar said he no longer had the “physical or financial resources” to make another trip to Oman, having spent just under £4,000 so far on charter flight tickets, hotels in Oman and return transport tickets to Dubai. He added that taxis charge £1,000 per person to go from Dubai to Oman.

He said his disabled grandmother, a quadriplegic with serious back problems, was now out of essential medication and that the State Department, although at fault, told him “it was not willing to do anything to help us get back.”

He is now pleading with the Ministry of Home Affairs to organize his family’s safe transportation from Dubai to Oman and accommodation until the next evacuation flight, or to provide them with a place on a charter flight outside the UAE.

“I used to think the British Embassy was so important. If you needed help to return to the UK safely, they would be willing to do that,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you have a specific name or not. You are British citizens and you will return safely. It’s shocking that this even happened.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were contacted for comment.