A sick and penniless man from Northern Ireland is trapped in the Middle East and claims he has been abandoned by the British government.
For 18 months Dutch-born Mr Henk van Rein has been refused permission to leave the United Arab Emirates to return home to Northern Ireland.
The businessman's passport is being withheld until a bitter labour dispute with his former employers is sorted out.
With his health rapidly deteriorating as he waits in a cramped and dirty hotel room, relatives have been forced to sell family jewellry to fund a campaign to get him home.
Fears are growing that he could be stuck in the Gulf state for years to come.
As efforts to free him continued, Mr van Rein said: "I have been completely abandoned by both the British and the Dutch.
"To all intents and purposes I am a British man but I don't carry the right travel documents."
The clothing consultant's plight began when he lost his £150,000 a year job in July 2001. His work and travel documents were seized until a legal battle with the Indian firm who sacked him is resolved.
The 52-year-old's former employers are demanding he repays money loaned to him when he helped set up a factory for them in Ajman. But Mr van Rein claims he was used for his technical expertise before being dumped by colleagues.
He has now run up a £7,000 bill with hotel owners who are threatening to order him out. Describing his living conditions, he said: "I probably kill about 100 cockroaches a day and I have been bitten by a rat.
"Money has been very tight and there have been times when I've gone three or four days without eating.
"I'm treated worse than a second class citizen and yet I am not a criminal. All I have done is get involved in a labour dispute."
Even though his wife Anne is sending him all her spare cash, the trapped man has lost nearly three stone in weight after going without food for days at a time.
Mrs van Rein now fears the family's luxury home in Lisburn, Co Antrim, could be repossessed as mounting bills have left her struggling to meet huge mortgage repayments.
The mother of three has been forced to take up a supply teaching job.
She has been angered and disappointed by the response to her pleas for help from both the British and Dutch embassies.
Mr van Rein left Holland age 17 and studied in Yorkshire before setting up home in Northern Ireland. His work took him around the world, but he considers himself as much British as Dutch - his mother is Welsh and his late father was a naturalised UK citizen. But crucially, he has never obtained a British passport.
His wife claimed: "The Dutch don't want Henk because he didn't live there long enough to pay tax contributions and the British are not interested because he doesn't have the right papers."
Mrs van Rein also told of the shocking physical and mental state her husband was in when she flew out last Easter with clothes and medical supplies for his high blood pressure and arthritis.
"I went out to save his sanity because he was crying on the phone at the slightest thing," she recalled. "He was not the man I had left the previous July. He had been wearing the same clothes for eight months and his health was awful."
Mr van Rein is due back in court next month for a hearing which could determine if his Dutch passport will be returned to him.
In the meantime, former UK Unionist MP Robert McCartney and the family's local Assembly member, Democratic Unionist Mr Edwin Poots, plan to lobby Dutch officials in London, Dubai and at the Hague.
Mr McCartney hit out at the authorities in Britain and Holland for turning their backs on him. He said: "This is like something out of Kafka.
"This family has been reduced to absolute penury while being caught between two governments who don't want to take responsibility."
PA