Briton jailed for four years in Dubai after customs find cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar under his shoe Last updated at 13:22pm on 08.02.08
A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.
Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport.
A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.
Dubai International Airport is a major hub for the Middle East and thousands of Britons pass through it every year to holiday in the glamorous beach and shopping haven.
But many of those tourists and business travellers are likely to be unaware of the strict zero-tolerance drugs policy in the UAE.
One man has even been jailed for possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport. Painkiller codeine is also banned.
If suspicious of a traveller, customs officials can use high-tech equipment to uncover even the slightest trace of drugs.
Mr Brown was detained and arrested in September last year and has been held in a cell with three other men in the city prison ever since.
This week the youth worker, who has two young children and a partner at home in Smethwick, West Midlands, was sentenced to four years in prison.
A 25-year-old Briton who was found with a similar speck in one pocket as he arrived on holiday has been awaiting sentence since November.
Meanwhile a Big Brother TV executive has so far been held without charge for five days after being arrested for possessing the health supplement melatonin.
The authorities claim to have discovered 0.01g of hashish in his luggage.
Last night Mr Brown's brother Lee said his case "defied belief".
"For that sort of amount common sense should prevail, from where it was found it was obviously something that had been crushed on the floor - it could have come from anywhere."
Rastafarian Mr Brown had been returning from a short trip to Ethiopia, where one of his children lives and where he owns property.
He was travelling with his partner Imani, who was also stopped and detained for more than a week.
Normally he flew direct to and from the UK, but decided to stop off in Dubai.
"He was incensed when he called me," said driving instructor Lee, 57. "It would be funny if the circumstances weren't so unpleasant.
"Bugs are crawling out of his mattress when he's sleeping. His family are frantic with worry and can't call him."
Last night campaign group Fair Trials International advised visitors to Dubai and Abu Dhabi to "take extreme caution".
Chief Executive Catherine Wolthuizen said: "We have seen a steep increase in such cases over the last 18 months.
"Customs authorities are using highly sensitive new equipment to conduct extremely thorough searches on travellers and if they find any amount - no matter how minute - it will be enough to attract a mandatory four-year prison sentence."
Mrs Wolthuizen added: "We even have reports of the imprisonment of a Swiss man for 'possession' of three poppy seeds on his clothing after he ate a bread roll at Heathrow.
"What many travellers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person."
Only two months after Mr Brown was stopped economics graduate Robert Dalton was detained in almost identical circumstances.
Mr Dalton, from Gravesend, on Kent was with two friends when he was stopped and asked to empty his pockets.
Officials found 0.03g of cannabis in a small amount of fluff. He is currently on trial and if convicted, is likely receive a four-year prison sentence.
Last night his brother Peter, 26, told how it took 24 hours to find out why he had been stopped.
"As we understand, the amount of cannabis was barely visible to the human eye and was at the bottom of the pocket of an old pair of jeans.
"He's not a drug user, but he goes clubbing and the speck was so small."
Last week Cat Le-Huy, a London-based German national, was arrested on arrival at the airport.
Mr Le-Huy, 31, head of technology with Big Brother production company Endemol, was arrested on suspicion of possessing illegal drugs after customs officers found melatonin, a health supplement used for jet lag available over the counter both in Dubai and in the US.
Authorities also claim they discovered fragments in one of his bags which they believe to be hashish. Fair Trials International said the amount was 0.01g.
_________________ Straight outta line
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Post subject: Re: If you enjoy freedom, stay the fuck outta Dubai
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 2:46 pm
Got Some
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:56 am Posts: 2922 Location: In a van down by the river Gender: Male
I really don't know what to say. I'm dumbfounded. How can these peoples countries not get involved with this and bring these people home? It's like enforcing some of those dumb laws in America like, "it's illegal to cross the street with an open umbrella". I made that up, but I've seen worse than that.
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Post subject: Re: If you enjoy freedom, stay the fuck outta Dubai
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:12 pm
Administrator
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:51 pm Posts: 14534 Location: Mesa,AZ
p911gt10c wrote:
Anon wrote:
Mr. Bush? Wanna take care of this one for us?
He can't. He's still busy looking for WMD's in Iraq.
Why should Mr. Bush take care of British citizens? That's the UK's problem if anything.
Seriously, though, I'm not sure how that country can be so stupid. They have a limited amount of oil, and they've done an excellent job building up a tourism industry as a backup source of prosperity, why ruin that? They'll be screwed if the entire Western world decides to stop visiting because they might be unfairly imprisoned.
_________________
John Adams wrote:
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
Post subject: Re: If you enjoy freedom, stay the fuck outta Dubai
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:21 pm
Supersonic
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2005 1:34 am Posts: 12029
Their wealth is built on slave labor.
Quote:
Dubai and the neighbouring emirates have posted economic growth that would embarrass China, but what won't be mentioned this weekend are the people whose endless toil is essential to that success.
They live in a slum called Sonapur, hidden in the dunes between Dubai and Sharjah. Without Sonapur, Dubai's architectural bling, its spas and tax-free splendour probably wouldn't exist. It's a Middle Eastern Soweto, where as many as 500,000 foreign labourers — mostly illiterates from the impoverished rural villages of the subcontinent — that build Dubai are housed in some of the most depressing conditions I've witnessed. Its a Hogarthian dystopia that should shame Dubaians, if they knew much about it. Or cared.
Sonapur is one of the biggest communities in the booming United Arab Emirates but it doesn't seem to exist officially. It isn't on official maps, road signs or in the ubiquitous Wikipedia. Its wretched sprawl of workers' filthy dormitories is an anonymous slum hidden from the Dubaians whose apartments its residents built. The best way to find Sonapur is to follow one of the worker buses that shuttle between Dubai's many building sites. About 90 minutes later, you'll be deposited in a sand-swept plain of four-storey dormitories sprawled as far as the eye can see, punctuated by the occasional provisions store selling ghee, naan and curry powders. Dubai gleams with world-class infrastructure but Sonapur didn't get much of it. Many of its roads are gravel and sand with no kerbing and few footpaths. Open sewers are common. UAE is strictly Islamic, and Sonapur's few places of worship for Hindus and Buddhists tend to be makeshift.
Dubai's economy expanded by 35% in 2006, and about 20% last year. It is impressive but it is not oil — that ran out decades ago. Dubai's rags-to-riches miracle relies on an age-old business plan: slave labour. Millions of impoverished Sri Lankans, Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos and Africans, working up to 80-hour-plus weeks, have built this gleaming oasis. With their passports seized as insurance, these bonded workers toil for about $US8 ($A9) a day. It is almost as if Dubai's employers have scanned the world and zeroed in on the poorest 20 nations to staff their projects. Promised riches but paid salaries well below the poverty line, they've been found jobs by unscrupulous middlemen charitably described as "employment agencies" who wouldn't have been out of place in 1780s Atlanta.
Dubai has over 250,000 foreign laborers, many of whom live in conditions described by Human Rights Watch as being "less than human." NPR reports that workers "typically live eight to a room, sending home a portion of their salary to their families, whom they don't see for years at a time." The BBC has reported that "local newspapers often carry stories of construction workers allegedly not being paid for months on end. They are not allowed to move jobs and if they leave the country to go home they will almost certainly lose the money they say they are owed. In September 2005, the Minister of Labour ordered one company to pay unpaid salaries within 24 hours after workers protested, and published the name of the offending company.
In December 2005, the Indian consulate in Dubai submitted a report to the Government of India detailing labor problems faced by Indian expatriates in the emirate. The report highlighted delayed payment of wages, substitution of employment contracts, premature termination of services and excessive working hours as being some of the challenges faced by Indian workers in the city. On 21 March 2006, workers at the construction site of Burj Dubai, upset over bus timings and working conditions, rioted: damaging cars, offices, computers, and construction tools.
The city's discriminatory legal system and unequal treatment of foreigners has been brought to light by its alleged attempts to cover up information on the rape of Alexandre Robert, a 15 year old French-Swiss national, by three locals, one of whom HIV status was hidden by the authorities for several months, the imprisonment without charge of Cat Le-Huy for alleged possession of 0.01g of hashish, and by the recent mass imprisonment of migrant laborers, most of whom were from India, on account of their protests against poor wages and living conditions.
Post subject: Re: If you enjoy freedom, stay the fuck outta Dubai
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:40 pm
Administrator
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:51 pm Posts: 14534 Location: Mesa,AZ
invention wrote:
Their wealth is built on slave labor.
Quote:
Dubai and the neighbouring emirates have posted economic growth that would embarrass China, but what won't be mentioned this weekend are the people whose endless toil is essential to that success.
They live in a slum called Sonapur, hidden in the dunes between Dubai and Sharjah. Without Sonapur, Dubai's architectural bling, its spas and tax-free splendour probably wouldn't exist. It's a Middle Eastern Soweto, where as many as 500,000 foreign labourers — mostly illiterates from the impoverished rural villages of the subcontinent — that build Dubai are housed in some of the most depressing conditions I've witnessed. Its a Hogarthian dystopia that should shame Dubaians, if they knew much about it. Or cared.
Sonapur is one of the biggest communities in the booming United Arab Emirates but it doesn't seem to exist officially. It isn't on official maps, road signs or in the ubiquitous Wikipedia. Its wretched sprawl of workers' filthy dormitories is an anonymous slum hidden from the Dubaians whose apartments its residents built. The best way to find Sonapur is to follow one of the worker buses that shuttle between Dubai's many building sites. About 90 minutes later, you'll be deposited in a sand-swept plain of four-storey dormitories sprawled as far as the eye can see, punctuated by the occasional provisions store selling ghee, naan and curry powders. Dubai gleams with world-class infrastructure but Sonapur didn't get much of it. Many of its roads are gravel and sand with no kerbing and few footpaths. Open sewers are common. UAE is strictly Islamic, and Sonapur's few places of worship for Hindus and Buddhists tend to be makeshift.
Dubai's economy expanded by 35% in 2006, and about 20% last year. It is impressive but it is not oil — that ran out decades ago. Dubai's rags-to-riches miracle relies on an age-old business plan: slave labour. Millions of impoverished Sri Lankans, Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos and Africans, working up to 80-hour-plus weeks, have built this gleaming oasis. With their passports seized as insurance, these bonded workers toil for about $US8 ($A9) a day. It is almost as if Dubai's employers have scanned the world and zeroed in on the poorest 20 nations to staff their projects. Promised riches but paid salaries well below the poverty line, they've been found jobs by unscrupulous middlemen charitably described as "employment agencies" who wouldn't have been out of place in 1780s Atlanta.
Dubai has over 250,000 foreign laborers, many of whom live in conditions described by Human Rights Watch as being "less than human." NPR reports that workers "typically live eight to a room, sending home a portion of their salary to their families, whom they don't see for years at a time." The BBC has reported that "local newspapers often carry stories of construction workers allegedly not being paid for months on end. They are not allowed to move jobs and if they leave the country to go home they will almost certainly lose the money they say they are owed. In September 2005, the Minister of Labour ordered one company to pay unpaid salaries within 24 hours after workers protested, and published the name of the offending company.
In December 2005, the Indian consulate in Dubai submitted a report to the Government of India detailing labor problems faced by Indian expatriates in the emirate. The report highlighted delayed payment of wages, substitution of employment contracts, premature termination of services and excessive working hours as being some of the challenges faced by Indian workers in the city. On 21 March 2006, workers at the construction site of Burj Dubai, upset over bus timings and working conditions, rioted: damaging cars, offices, computers, and construction tools.
The city's discriminatory legal system and unequal treatment of foreigners has been brought to light by its alleged attempts to cover up information on the rape of Alexandre Robert, a 15 year old French-Swiss national, by three locals, one of whom HIV status was hidden by the authorities for several months, the imprisonment without charge of Cat Le-Huy for alleged possession of 0.01g of hashish, and by the recent mass imprisonment of migrant laborers, most of whom were from India, on account of their protests against poor wages and living conditions.
I can't find this on google maps...
_________________
John Adams wrote:
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
Post subject: Re: If you enjoy freedom, stay the fuck outta Dubai
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:27 pm
too drunk to moderate properly
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
likeatab wrote:
things like this are the reason i can just about guarantee i will never visit the Middle East. really scary.
You're missing out on a hell of a vacation spot!
_________________ "Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest." - e.v.
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I really don't know what to say. I'm dumbfounded. How can these peoples countries not get involved with this and bring these people home? It's like enforcing some of those dumb laws in America like, "it's illegal to cross the street with an open umbrella". I made that up, but I've seen worse than that.
