Western tourists oblivious to the severe drugs laws in the United Arab Emirates often end up in jail after arriving in Dubai with tiny amounts of narcotics for their own use. A few cases showed tourists who faced imprisonment for a minimum of four years, caught with small amounts of narcotics.
In 2006, US hip-hop music producer Dallas Austin was sentenced to four years in jail after he was found in possession of 1.26 grammes of cocaine and other banned substances. The composer, who had come to Dubai for a three-day birthday party for British supermodel Naomi Campbell, was pardoned by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum immediately after his sentence was pronounced.
Bert Tatham was imprisoned for four years in Dubai last June after he was arrested during a stopover from Afghanistan, when officials found two poppy flowers in his luggage and 0.6 grammes of hashish in his clothes. He was also charged with having traces of drugs in his urine. Also in June, a 24-year-old Italian tourist landed a four-year jail term followed by deportation after being found in possession of 0.01 grammes of hashish, which he said he had forgotten in a jacket pocket.
Keith Brown was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way to England when he was stopped. A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003 gram, which would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar, on the tread of one of his shoes. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment.
Last week, Cat Le-Huy was arrested on arrival at the Dubai airport. Cat Le-Huy, 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 of hashish. Fair Trials International said the amount was 0.01g.
“There are over a million British tourists a year coming to the UAE,” said Simon Goldsmith, spokesman at the British Embassy in Dubai. “We have a travel advice making it clear that the penalty is very severe for drug possession.”
8 Comments
What about the man arrested for having 3 poppy seeds on his clothes from a bread roll he ate before boarding his flight, or the people arrested for carrying medicines they have been prescribed by their doctor? What about the people who have been held for months without even being charged?
To paint all these incidents as a matter of tourist ignorance is quite unfair, and if such injustices continue it will be Dubai’s tourist industry that suffers.
For that matter, if you ARE going to arrest people for 0.003g of hashish, why not test travellers money? 4 out of 5 dollar bills contains traces of cocaine (it is very easily trransferred from one bill to another) and no doubt the same is true of other currencies.
Just turn the entire airport into a jail and be done with it!
I am a coworker of the last person mentioned, Cat Le-Huy from Endemol. I have made a protest song on YouTube that covers the absurd nature of his detention:
Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M8I8ydkq0g
Matt McFaul
I won’t be going to Dubai, not because I want to take drugs but because I run the risk of being contaminated by others due to the kind of people I meet on day to day business, it would be too easy to pick up trace elements on my skin and it seems that is enough for a madatory four year stretch in jail
Dubai seemed like the ideal stopping off point on long haul flights, it doesn’t anymore.
I would never go to Dubai because it sounds unbearably tacky and vile , but the treatment of these people is appalling. OK , some might be drug users in Britain , but several of these might have done nothing more than tread in the minute remains of a joint down at their local shops , or have drugs legal in Britain .
Britain should be cutting off diplomatic relations with Dubai until all these people are freed
These cases worry me as a possible tourist. Had I not read this I could easily be in the same situation for having Neurofen+ in my bag which contains Codine, an illegal drug in Dubai.
Looking at the amounts mentioned in these cases, It seems to me that they could find something they consider illegal on anybody if they tried hard enough (is the tread of your shoe really somewhere you can be sure of being free of any substance. Does stepping in someone elses discarded hashish traces really constitute drug smuggling?)
I will not travel to Dubai now that these laws targetting the wrong things and the wrong people have come to my attention.
Some are justified if a decent amount of drugs is found. But specks ? and o.003 grams if drugs. MELATONIN for gods sake ? This is abuse of authority. One of the reasons is that the custom officials and authorities making those arrests get a rewards for each successful arrest. So it seems they try to keep the person in jail for them to get a reward. This will DEFINITELY hurt dubai’s tourism industry in the future. Besides, they CANNOT charge people for drugs administered in dubai or sold in dubai. For POPPY seeds ? that is horrible, they sell them here in dubai in some bagel coffee shops and im sure on bread.
plain ignorance by dubai authorities, they should wake up to this issue. I hope tourists complain and drag this and make it a public issue or boycott Dubai.
It’s amazing and extremely unfortunate that even the so-called ultra civilized and educated people like you all are guided like blind oxen by the media!!.
We here at Dubai know that many ‘criminals’ with an amount of banned drugs, much more than that mentioned by this writer in his report, have been sent scot free by Dubai authorities as a gesture of goodwill. If instead of taking oaths not to visit Dubai, you people bother to use your brains and do some practical , genuine , impartially sourced research, you will come to know that there are no prisoners from the West in any of the Dubai prisons, doing time for drug related cases for amounts less than adequate to prove them drug smugglers.
Actually, a ‘civilized’ nation or country ought to make sure that none of her citizens ever get an iota of any such drug on his or her ” shoe-soles”!!!!!!!
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