Friday, August 03, 2007

Mandatory Minimums Gone Crazy: Dubai

This would be a ridiculous story if it weren't so tragic, robbed of four years of your life for a crumb of dope or for having had a toke in another country the day or days before passing through the Emirates.

Dubai is a busy transfer/refuelling stop, I wonder how many thousands of people transit through there totally unaware of the savage laws that are in place.

Be very afraid, but more importantly be very very clean.

But what many do not realise is that a mere speck of a drug, forgotten in an unwashed trouser pocket or tucked in a purse, can result in the mandatory, minimum term of four years in jail.

One of the jailed Britons, aged 22 and identified only by his initials PP, was arrested at Dubai airport in June 7 when 0.11 grammes of hashish were found in his bag. The amount would barely be enough to make one "joint"............


"The presence of drugs in the body is counted as possession," the Foreign Office warns.

In other words travellers can be jailed even if they are not carrying drugs for use: a mere trace in the blood stream of a drug consumed before entering the UAE is enough to secure a jail term.



Such was the fate of an 18-year-old Egyptian boy who smoked a cigarette containing hashish a day before he flew to the UAE earlier this year.

Traces of the drug were found in his blood and he was jailed in April by a court in the emirate of Fujairah for four years. more .

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why anyone voluntarily visits hell-holes such as the UAE, Indonesia, and so on is utterly beyond my comprehension.

How to get someone that you don't like imprisoned for 4 years:
1. Take a small amount of marijuana on the plane when departing a liberal western nation en route to Dubai.
2. Plant the marijuana on the target on the aircraft.
3. Report that said person was 'behaving suspiciously'.

What's worse is there are a lot of lunatics in the West who never learned from prohibition, who think that the same pointless, destructive policies should be adopted in Western democracies.

Himself said...

G'day Kim.
Why indeed visit the UAE even though they are spending billions to try and make it the number one tourist destination, but as I mention in the article Dubai is a busy refuelling stop and as far as I am aware passengers deplane while they give the plane a sup of kero making anyone with a blim or slightly out of it extremely vunerable.

Steps one to three would be a lot cheaper than a divorce; scary!

And yes there are an awful lot of lunatics in the West and are far from falling into the category of "a liberal western nation"

Might I suggest you read my "Florida to right a terrible wrong" post, it's a shocker.