British pensioner on Egyptian death row for drug smuggling claims he was 'set up' Ferndale and his three crew, all from the Seychelles, were caught in 2011. Hearings made clear that they were involved in some sort of "sting" operation, since an arrest warrant was issued in advance, but details of the investigation were unusually kept secret, local journalists said. Death sentences against all four were confirmed at a court in the coastal resort of Hurghada on Monday, along with a fifth man in absentia, a Pakistani friend of Ferndale's who was said to have supplied the drugs. The four are all now in solitary confinement in the main regional prison in the oasis town of Qena, in the desert halfway between Hurghada and Luxor. Ferndale said conditions were better than Hurghada prison, where he said he "wouldn't want to keep a rat." He said both prisoners and guards were kind to him, though there was no electricity and consequently no fan in his 10 foot by eight foot cell. Outside temperatures in the town on Tuesday were 48C. "I just sit and sweat all day long," he said. Though downcast about his situation and occasionally suffering slight memory loss, he seemed otherwise fit and healthy. He is normally allowed one visit a month. An exception was made for The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, and Ferndale was ushered by four jailers into a waiting room littered with rubbish and stinking of urine, but decorated with pictures of swans, peacocks and a waterfall. Mr Ferndale accepted that his life story was both mysterious and eccentric. Born in South Africa to a family of anti-apartheid activists, he moved to Britain to study art and took citizenship before moving to Pakistan in 1972 to pursue his vocation of campaigning for wildlife. At one stage he ran a falcon hospital, and he supported himself by business ventures and journalism, including writing at one stage for the Guardian about his attempts to save the regional bird life from the passion of local elites, particularly the ruling families of the Gulf, for falconeering. His family, including his adult children, were in Britain, he said, but refused to discuss them further though he said they knew where he was. He said he had made sure to protect them from the consequences of the way he chose to live his life by ensuring they had different surnames from his own. He said he had made enemies by his work, and had even challenged the British royal family for its support of the "corrupt" Gulf sheikhs, but in the meantime his life had taken a number of bad turns. "I was too much of an idealist," he said, breaking down in tears. If I had my life again, I would become a banker. I made disastrous decisions in my life, to live recklessly, to pursue truth at any cost. I never understood that you were supposed to get a good career, grow old slowly and get a pension. He said he had sailed from the Seychelles, where he had his engine repaired, to Oman, but that his crew would go no further for fear of rampant piracy in the Gulf of Aden. He had recruited three replacements from the Seychelles, and had sailed on in April 2011 to Aden where he had picked up the "incense" which he agreed to carry in return for his Egyptian friend, "Gamal," paying his fuel costs. He claimed Gamal was, unbeknown to him, the son of a prominent Egyptian drug-runner, and that he was being "set up." He also claimed that the arrest warrant was issued while he was in international waters, and so was invalid. In nearly all cases, death penalties for drugs cases in Egypt are commuted to life imprisonment. However, there is no automatic exchange of prisoners between Egypt and the United Kingdom for drugs offences, and Ferndale said he had been told by the British embassy that unless acquitted at the final appeal court he could expect to spend at least eight years in an Egyptian prison. "Well, I am 74," he said. He said he would tell more of his story if he were either spared or was sure to die, when it would make no difference. I'm not saying anything that might get me killed, until I know if I'm going to be killed. Then I will kill myself. I will not let them hang me.