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Our man in the Yemen moved pregnant lover into official residence
Felix Allen16 Nov 2009
A British ambassador's personal life threatened to start a diplomatic row today after it emerged that he has installed his pregnant mistress in his residence in the Yemen.
The surprise move by Her Majesty's Ambassador Tim Torlot has shocked officials in the deeply religious Gulf state, where Sharia law is enforced and adultery is punishable with death by stoning.
Mr Torlot's wife Bridie is said to be “devastated” at their break-up after 23 years of marriage, and has returned to Britain, where she is thought to be filing for divorce.
Her 52-year-old husband is reportedly engaged to his lover Jennifer Steil, 40, an American journalist who is set to reveal details of their romance in a new book on her life in the capital Sanaa.
The affair has “caused concern” among both foreign envoys and local officials in the conservative country, sources said.
Mr Torlot, an Oxford-educated career diplomat, is seen grinning and with his arm around his mistress's waist in a photograph on Ms Steil's Facebook page. They began a relationship after meeting at an official function not long after the Torlots arrived in Sanaa in 2007.
Mrs Torlot, 51, who also used to work for the Diplomatic Service, left Yemen at the beginnnig of last year and now lives in West Sussex. Ms Steil moved in with Mr Torlot soon afterwards.
A family friend told the Daily Mail: “Bridie was completely devastated when it happened and is still completely devastated. Their friends find Tim's course of action completely incomprehensible.”
The publicity material for Ms Steil's book describes how “destiny intervened” when she was about to return home to New York after a year working for the English-language Yemen Observer.
The blurb for the memoir — entitled The Woman Who Fell From The Sky: An American Journalist's Adventures In The Oldest City On Earth — goes on: “In her last weeks in Yemen she
met the British Ambassador and they fell in love. Steil has been in Yemen ever since . . . living in the Ambassador's residence and writing this book. They are engaged to be married.”
It is believed she is currently in London awaiting the birth of their child.
Mr Torlot is listed as separated on the Foreign Office's website, where travel advice warns those visiting Yemen to “respect local traditions, customs, laws and religions at all times”. Technically, ambassadors serving abroad have diplomatic immunity from prosecution.
A Foreign Office spokesman said they did not discuss employees' personal lives and had not been approached on the matter by the Yemeni authorities.
Reader views (8)
To Monroe, Worcester, MA: I don't know where you get your information on this ambassador being 'well-known to work long hours and is known to be well-liked by the Yemeni officials and locals' - a briefing by Torlot himself, or Steil, perhaps? - but the only 'long hours' this ambassador's known to put in are when he's desperate to sort out embassy finances prior to audit. It's not the affair and divorce that people are het up about; it's the hypocrisy, and having his mistress live off the British taxpayer. As to his being 'well-liked by the Yemeni officials and locals', local staff at 'his' embassy have expressed contempt for his behaviour. The man's an embarrassment. His priorities have been his mistress and saving his own skin. Recall him NOW. he's no loss.
- Naomi, London, 17/11/2009 19:38
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Men in Yemen have multiple wives, so no morals or cultural standards have been disrespected there. Women are property in Yemen, so I'm pretty sure NO ONE CARES that the Ambassador chose a new partner. It's ridiculous to think that getting a divorce and starting a new relationship would somehow affect the ability to do one's job. How many people have done or are doing this as we live and breathe? And it's different in this case WHY? Should all divorcing people be told they can't do their job while they divorce? Shame on the press for one-sided reporting. I am sure that if appropriate interviews were done with collateral sources of information you would turn up positive opinions of the Ambassador. He is well-known to work long hours and is known to be well-liked by the Yemeni officials and locals.
- Monroe, Worcester, MA, 17/11/2009 00:36
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Frank
This shows how ignorant you are. The country that you are reffering is not Yemen but Sudan.
At least in Yemen they have morals and stand for decency unlike this country where you have a record teenage pregancy out of wedlock and dis-integrating society due to adultery and all sorts of lewdness
Sack this guy and replace him with some who is decent
- Aziz, London, UK, 16/11/2009 21:13
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Another example of those in office thinking that the system is there to do with as they please, just like MPs over their pay. Yemenis will be too polite to say much, and they probably value the £££s the UK is pumping into their country, but the limp response from the FCO is really too much. Don't they understand that we don't care whether this harms our relationship with Yemen, but we do care that Mr Torlot has been shacking-up with his American mistress at taxpayers' expense.
Come on FCO, sack him for bringing the UK into disrepute and mis-spending taxpayers' money.
- John, Home Counties, 16/11/2009 20:18
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As well as the cultural sensitivity issue, there's a question of security. This woman is a foreign journalist, for God's sake. She'd been living in Yemen for a while: did anyone in the UK vet her to see what political or other connections she had BEFORE she took up residence ... at the British taxpayer's expense? It's offensive that this smug grinning patently untrustworthy person holds high(ish) office for the Crown. Bet his mind's not been on the job since he clapped eyes on her. He doesn't deserve respect. Sack him, and send out in his place somebody respectable, intelligent, culturally sensitive, with high moral standards and self-discipline. That's if there's anyone in the Foreign Office who still meets that specification.
- Naomi, London, England, 16/11/2009 14:57
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Good for him screw Yemen. That is a country stuck in the middle ages that wanted to murder a Christian school teacher for naming a teddy bear? We should break of all diplomatic ties with them and return their benefit sponges.
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 16/11/2009 14:37
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The Yemenis should not take offense, and are being very hypocritical if they do. Under Islamic law a man can divorce a woman by saying "I divorce you" to her three times (or something very much like that). This man is clearly past that stage, so applying Yemeni law, customs and morals he'd be free to remarry and clearly intends to do that as soon as the rather slower British law permits.
- Nigel, London, 16/11/2009 14:06
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The lack of expertise and professionalism at the Foreign Office (FO) goes from bad to worse. The FO should have stamped this out at the onset. Such activities are OK in the West, up to a point, but in a very muslim country like Yemen it is more than being totally insensitive, it is utterly stupid and insensitive. Sack the Ambassador who is not fit for purpose and the link man at the FO responsible for the area.
- Ralph, London, England, 16/11/2009 12:36
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