منتدى استراحات زايد - Relocating a site from an uncooperative host

I'm unsure of whether this is a good place for this question or not - moderators please feel free to relocate this question if you feel that's appropriate.

I'm currently trying to help out a vB licence (and domain) holder (TerriS) with relocating a forum from one host to another* in the capacity of tech admin.

Ours is a situation where the original host offered the space for the forum for free on a server he maintained with his own stuff* then basically changed his mind a few months later. At that time he opened a new account and put it in his friend's name* who at the time had admin privileges at our forum.

The 'friend'* who has since left the forum due to a breakdown of the previous good relationship* now refuses to acknowledge our repeated requests to get at our database. As a result of this* we're trying to migrate onto space that is fully controlled by the licence holder. In an ideal world it would be a simple case of backing up the existing MySQL data and relocating it the new host* but the space currently occupied has no CLI access to MySQL* and phpMyAdmin is limited in what it will allow us to do - undertaking a back-up being one of them.

We're looking for suggestions on what recourse/options we have at this point. We have approached the primary host that offered the virtual server the forum is on* but they have stated that they don't do backups on behalf of customers - probably because we have made it clear we are one remove away from them.

Short of continuing to prevail upon our current host to assist indefinitely* we are unsure whether there are other options we could try to get the matter closed out.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to try and move forward in a rather messy situation?

Chris (the tech admin)