Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Christopher Emms says he is being arbitrarily detained in Saudi Arabia because the US has no evidence that he conspired to help the regime in Pyongyang.
Christopher Emms was in"survival mode" by the time he was moved to his second Saudi Arabian jail.
In an exclusive interview with Sky News detailing his experiences in North Korea and in Saudi Arabia, Emms, now on bail in Jeddah, says he is innocent and that he had briefed the British security services about his trip without causing them any alarm. He told Sky News that business was"a tremendous failure in many ways" because"even now, but especially back then, it was very much a wild west".
"I don't really know the gentleman," said Emms, explaining they had spoken for the conference but had not kept in touch."All I can comment on is what we all see online on his various different channels, at which point, you know, I think that speaks for itself."North Korea was"pretty much exactly what you see in any kind of documentary that's ever been made by any Western journalists", said Emms.
Without their documents they were taken to their hotel"which is essentially a compound, there's no getting out [and] there's no getting in unless you're accredited to be in this hotel, which is pretty much empty." According to Emms the conference itself was being held at a big facility"but there was no one in it apart from us [the speakers] and these people attending, I'd say no more than 20 people".
He talked about how cryptocurrency made it"possible to transfer money across any country in the world regardless of... sanctions," the indictment alleged. "Just before leaving for the airport, and lot of people don't know this because I didn't sort of make it public, I was the only person, I was called up to my hotel room and I had my hotel room searched and I was interrogated by the guides.
"So it was you know, I was sitting there really praying on the way back on the bus to the airport that I was gonna get stamped to get put on a plane which, thankfully, I did with no issues, but it was scary."The indictment against Emms quotes a text message he sent to the group of attendees stating:"Hi all I just got pulled by police at the airport[.] Would recommend removing any photos of conference as they knew a lot.
"At the end of the time that I spent with them, you know, they made it clear to me that they didn't feel that I'd done anything wrong and they weren't going to take the matter further. So I thought that's it, that's fine, we'll leave it there." "I was then arrested and taken to the police station inside the airport. And I sat down there for a number of hours while they made a decision as to what they were going to do with me."
The duty officer at the embassy took his details but said there wasn't much they could do on a Sunday. "Obviously I wouldn't know what crimes they had committed. Once you're in prison, so I'm told, you don't discuss what what anyone's done. But they, on the face of it, were incredibly kind." "He asked me a very simple question. He said: 'You've got a choice here. You can either be extradited of your own free will or you can decline the extradition request, in which case the Saudi authorities will decide whether you're going or not. What do you want to do?'"So I was then taken back to the other police station in the airport.
"And it took a while really, I guess for all of the, you know, everything, to leave my body. All of this, this whatever was going on inside me, that I could actually sleep. "I've been held in Saudi Arabia for the last five months with no evidence being supplied from the US government as to what I'm guilty of.