NEWLYWED Katie Price’s husband served time in a hellhole Dubai over fraud charges jail just weeks before he met the former glamour model.
Lee Andrews, 41, was slammed into notorious Dubai Central Prison after being arrested at his home in the emirate over allegations of obtaining money by deception, sources said.
He is understood to have spent three weeks in the overcrowded prison – where violence and infections are rife – as he shared a huge cell with 65 other inmates.
Andrews, whose fantasist online claims were exposed by The Sun, was finally freed after apparently paying court fines.
Just weeks after his release last November, Andrews struck up an online romance with Katie, 47 – before the pair stunned relatives by tying the knot in Dubai last week.
A Brit who was locked up at the sprawling jail at the same time said Andrews was “terrified and flustered” when he arrived and slept on a concrete floor with no mattress.
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The Brit said: “Lee was in a terrible state when he arrived – and it is not surprising because the jail is an absolute hellhole.
“The establishment and the staff who run it take pride in the misery of inmates and being in there is mental and physical torture.
“When Lee came in he was put into our ‘Amber’, which is a huge cell with 65 people including rapists and killers in there.
“He was terrified and extremely flustered, and seemed not to comprehend what had happened to him.
“He did not even have a mattress to sleep on for the first few nights and was on a freezing floor with just two towels over him.
“Me and another Brit helped him out and gave him the basics and helped him survive.
“We got him a mattress and few days later when someone was released and it became free and he slept on it on the floor.
“He had nothing and was constantly asking people to borrow money, as he had none on his prison card.
“He claimed to be wealthy but clearly had nothing.
“You could tell within an hour that Lee was a complete bull-sh***er and nothing he said was true.
“And nobody on the outside was helping him it seemed – because it is very easy to get money put on the prison card.
“I gave him some money – about 150 dirhams which is £30 – for items in the canteen like soap and biscuits and drinks and never got it back.
“You even have to pay for your own drinking water in there – so you need money to survive.
“He was phoning people on the outside including his girlfriend at the time but she was not helping him and he had nothing.
“He kept talking about how he loved his girlfriend and was going to fix things with her.
“It is very odd that he has come out and married Katie Price so soon – and I can only assume he is after her money and she should be very careful indeed.”
Fantasist Andrews was slammed into the jail after splitting up with exs Alana Percival and Crystal Janke, who he dated at the same time last year.
The Sun told this week of claims he allegedly took £123,000 from Crystal and that police had investigated claims of fraud.
During his spell inside, Andrews is said to have “kept his head down” but argued with some inmates over fitness gear.
Our source added: “You are only allowed outside once a week but you are allowed to exercise from 4-6pm in the Amber.
“He was enterprising and made dumbbells out of some mop handles and water bottles and managed to have quite vigorous workouts.
“He borrowed a skipping rope from an Egyptian inmate once but then would not lend him the dumbbells.
“There was a row and pushing and shoving – and Lee looked like he’d be able to handle himself.
“But it got broken up quickly.
“They are so strict on fighting in there that they’d have punished the whole Amber, so other prisoners stepped in.
“Other than that he kept his head down, only spoke really to me and one other British guy and went into his shell.”
Our revelations come after we told how fitness fanatic Andrews had challenged Katie’s ex – former cage-fighter Alex Reid, 50 – to an mma fight “anytime, anywhere”
Yesterday, Reid said: “I’ve seen the noise about a possible MMA fight involving me.
“In the past, I fought anyone, anywhere, at any time. That’s the truth.
“But experience teaches you that bravado isn’t wisdom and combat sports come with real, lifelong consequences.
“Public attention can be intoxicating and sometimes the most responsible thing is restraint and protecting others from their own inexperience.”
We told last week how Andrews faked meeting Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian using AI pictures and made false claims including being an ‘advisor’ to the Labour Party.
Asked about his stint in prison, Andrews initially said “no comment” then denied being jailed.
A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesperson said: “We supported a British national who was detained in the United Arab Emirates.”
Inside ‘Dubai’s version of Alcatraz’
MIA O’Brien was locked up in the Al-Awir Central Prison in Dubai.
The jail is used for both male and female convicts with them being seperated once they step through the chilling gates.
Women make up one of the four blocks inside the huge jail, according to the British Government website.
Horror stories from inmates who have previously been locked up and those from the families of Brits still trapped behind bars paint a disturbing picture of Al-Awir.
In 2012, Karl Williams was imprisoned for a year after police found drugs in the boot of his hire car.
He compared the Al-Awir jail to the “Dubai version of Alcatraz” during his sentence.
In his memoir, he recalled seeing inmates being stabbed to death in violent clashes that were not stopped by guards.
In a statement, he said that his testicles had been electrocuted while he was interrogated by police.
“They pulled down my trousers, spread my legs and started to electrocute my testicles,” he wrote in the statement.
“It was unbelievably painful. I was so scared. I started to believe that I was going to die in that room.”
Their lawyers also said that the men were forced to sign documents in Arabic at gunpoint.
Karl claimed Russian gangsters ruled the prison wards and allegedly used HIV-positive inmates to rape and deliberately infect others as a form of punishment.
At least four HIV-positive prisoners at Al-Awir were allegedly denied medication up to five months, according to another shocking report by the Human Rights Watch.
British footballer Billy Hood made similar accusations as he said prisoners were tortured and left to die from diseases.
His claims were repeated in 2021 by 60-year-old Albert Douglas who told The Sun prisoners are raped, tortured and even starved by the cruel guards.
Dubai’s prison system and government deny all the claims.