2y ago

British tourist sentenced to three months in Dubai jail for ‘insulting’ airport staff

www.independent.co.uk

A UK citizen has been sentenced to three months in jail in Dubai after “insulting” airport staff who were slow to bring his mother a wheelchair.

The unnamed man was originally issued a Dh 10,000 (£2,150) fine, but his appeal against this failed and his punishment was extended to a jail term on 6 November.

An airport employee told the court that the man swore at her after she had explained the airport’s wheelchair policy to him, telling him that “a wheelchair would be made available before boarding the bus”.

“When I tried to explain it to him, he insulted me using very bad language. I told the traveller that using such offensive language is not allowed at Dubai airport but he responded that he didn’t care.”

The employee then called the police, and a case was filed against the man in Dubai’s Criminal Court. Following an appeal, which he lost, the fine was escalated into a jail sentence, followed by immediate deportation.

129 comments

Fuck that guy, but at the same time that’s a ridiculous sentence.
Honestly, you have to be mental to go to one of these countries. I know they want to become tourist hubs, but there’s just so many reasons to avoid.
- Yeah I refuse to ever take a flight route through any of those countries. I don’t care if it’s a 15 min layover.
  
  Same. I wont even get close to that region of the world.
  
  Eh, I've been through Dubai on a layover. It's fine as long as you act normal and dress conservatively. Obviously there are people who can't or won't meet that standard but it's genuinely fine for most people.
- Read the article. No mention of what was said that I could see.
- but at the same time that’s a ridiculous sentence.
  I mean... he had the option of just paying the fine and be done with it - he gambled and he lost.
  Honestly, you have to be mental to go to one of these countries.
  Sometimes it's almost impossible to avoid. Dubai and Doha are huge hubs for connecting flights.
  (I am also not a huge fan because Dubai airport was the only time in my life where I had to wait in line to take a piss)
  
  The fine is obscene as well.
  I don’t think “gambled and lost” is a good enough excuse to imprison someone for 3 months over verbal abuse.
  I don’t want to defend this asshole, but the punishment is just too much for what he did.
  
  Have you never been to a busy bar, concert, restaurant, music festival, street fair, or sporting event before? Hell I’d say I’ve waited in line at an airport almost every other time I travel. When a big flight lands, the nearest bathroom often gets slammed. I’ve experienced this across the US and Europe.
  I’m shocked anyone’s made it through life without queuing for the bathroom more than once.
- Or just don't be a cunt. They brought this entirely on themselves.
  Why should it be legal to shout and swear at people who are just doing their job.
  In many places it's illegal to do this to someone on the street.
  In the UK this would be a public order offense for threatening, harassing or intimidating behaviour. 2k fine or 6 months in prison.
  
  You wouldn't have your sentence increased from a fine to a prison sentence for trying to appeal against it though. Let's not pretend that the legal system in Dubai and UK are similar
  
  It should be illegal and they should be punished, but the fine is ridiculous and 3 months of jail is disgusting.
  In the UK you don’t treat someone like this for a single offense, where someone’s annoyed and has an outburst.
  If you and the UAE are on the same page about how to punish people, maybe you should reflect on that.
  
  or 6 months in prison.
  If it's a first time offence and non-violent it's more likely not going to be custodial. Even if it was anything under 12 months custodial will be suspended.
  Especially with prisons as packed as they currently are.
Love how much OP is shilling for UAE. I doubt OP would be so okay with the jail sentence if it were them who had to serve it.
- Just because I'm not accepting of much of the vile behavior that is tolerated in the West does not mean that I am shilling for the UAE.
  
  Potty mouth language is ViLe wEstErn bEhavIor, meanwhile UAE has slaves and treats women as 2nd class citizens.
  
  You’re right, yelling at someone is super vile behavior. It should definitely be punished. I assume you also believe that freely expressing options about politics, or religion is also super vile and should be punished.
  The west has its own issues, and the way people interact with each other is one of them, but the UAE is not in a position to pass judgement. The forced civility between civilians while the government carries out mass executions by beheading of dissidents is a thin vail over the same vile behavior you are decrying in your comments.
  I’ve read all of your comments in this thread, you are 1000% shilling for UAE
  
  Charging a person for three months for being an asshole is too much tho. With all diferent cultures and stuff, what can even grant such a sentence? Article didn't specify it. I can't believe a ranting brit can cause that much of a problem to lock him up.
I mean, insulting staff is disgusting behaviour, but 3 months of prison is absolutely insane. These countries are still hellholes stuck in the past, and I'll make sure never to visit them.
- In the UK it could be up to 6 months jail. He got off light.
  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/4
- He could have just paid the £2,150 fine, but instead he chose to appeal...
  Engaging in legal action in a foreign country isn't exactly the brightest idea. Pay the fine and get out.
  Like, 3 months is an insane sentence, but it sounds like he just leaned in at every opportunity.
  
  Ah, yes, the victim blaming.
Why do people still visit Dubai? There's all kinds of harmless or relatively minor stuff that can get you thrown in prison there. I wouldn't even change planes in that theocratic shithole.
- I was told that they have cheap stuff in duty-free and the flights are cheaper than with some other transits.
  But I agree with the sentiment, it's probably not the best thing to support them by visiting and leaving your money with them
I’m not a big fan of the UAE, but I do like the idea of criminalizing the abuse of service workers. The American “kiss their ass faster and more thoroughly” style isn’t fair to employees, and only rewards bad behavior.
- That's easily solvable by refusing service to someone who uses abusive language.
  The only instance where words should get you jail time is if it's a specific and targeted threat against someone, just being a douche is far too grey of an area to put people in prison for.
  
  True. Jail time would often be overkill, but people need to understand that it’s not acceptable to threaten to take away someone’s livelihood (and often their health insurance) just because the employee is following company policy. That can be a much more serious threat than customers realize.
  In order to refuse service, employees have to feel comfortable doing so. That means being certain that there will be no negative repercussions from management, and that management will back their decision 100%. Service workers shouldn’t have to choose between keeping their dignity or paying their rent.
I'm not crazy about a lot of these places but I do so hate assholes who treat the waitstaff like their own personal lot in life. Fuck this guy if these ~~alligators~~ allegations are true 🐊
Edit: every time I hear the word allegations, my mind immediately turnd to
Alligators
freddy vs jason (if you say it funny kenough)
Edit: even sadder, i first spelled it like allegators --> what Lawyers should have been called. Allegators, like allocutors
- And yet, stupid games.
  
  Yeah the punishment was extreme but what was the guy thinking? If you're gonna travel to another country the least you should do is make yourself aware of the shit you might be in for.
  A long flight can be stressful, sure, but you're not in England now you silly sausage.
  
  Wow my games aren't stupid. Saying that is worth like a zillion months in a cell.
2008: Authorities released father-of-three Andrew Brown, 43, from Birmingham, who had been serving a four-year jail sentence after police at Dubai airport found 0.003 grams (0.0001 ounce) of cannabis stuck to the sole of a shoe in his luggage last September, the daily 7 Days said.
- What sucks is you know the rich fuckers in Dubai are doing every drug underneath the sun.
  
  The rich fuckers abuse their slaves daily too.
- A disgraceful incident but a completely different case.
Fuck Sharia law, fuck draconian abrahamic religions, fuck their way of life and their culture.
These asshats are going to drag us into the dark ages because of their make believe gods.
- Embrace science over religion. Socialism over cronyism.
- Yeah I'll admit it. I hate religious people. Even the ones that don't push these practices onto others.
  It's funny to me how the ones who fully follow their religious doctrine are called extremists when they're actually the only ones actually following the written rules.
  So you're either aggressively trying to expand your influence on the world or your hypocritically cherry picking details to make you feel better about it.
  Either way I'm sick of fucking hearing about it. Idgaf which sky daddy you pray to or believe is real. Idgaf about what your special book says you can or can't do. Absolutely none of it holds any weight to me at all and it's just modern barbarism using religious persecution as a shield to hide behind.
  "They made fun of my religion 😭😭😭"
  Yeah cause you just killed 3 women for not wearing the right piece of fuckin cloth on their heads.
  
  Western bigotry... I'm a bit rusty, is that 6 months or 9 months in a decrepit cell?
Fuck Dubai.
Badly-behaved person meets a black sheep country.
Man travels outside of UK and expects to be treated as if at home!!
- It’s a crime in the UK too.
  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/4
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A UK citizen has been sentenced to three months in jail in Dubai after “insulting” airport staff who were slow to bring his mother a wheelchair.
The unnamed man was originally issued a Dh 10,000 (£2,150) fine, but his appeal against this failed and his punishment was extended to a jail term on 6 November.
The Court of Appeal heard that the man began to insult staff at Dubai International Airport after they told him that they couldn’t immediately bring his mother a wheelchair, reports the Daily Mail.
“I saw the traveller repeatedly asking an airport desk employee about the wheelchair and expected that he might have not understood her explanation,” she said, reports The National.
In October, an American student briefly faced a year in prison after being accused of assaulting staff during an altercation.
In 2017, a British tourist was also sentenced to a brief jail term after making “rude gestures” and touching a man’s hip in a bar.
The original article contains 299 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 46%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It makes sense that a penalty is set proportional to the harm caused, so the 3 months sentence might make sense if the victim was genuinelly psychologically affected by it in a way that lasted a significant period, but for merelly feeling insulted 3 months seems the kind of "Justice not at all trying to be Just" you get when authoritarian moralism is encoded in Law, not at all what law-making should strive for in a country aiming for Rule Of Law were sentencing is guided by harm caused rather than the iron-fist enforcing of moral behaviours.
Of course, this being the UAE, I'm not at all surprised that the Law is not at all about doing what is Just, since unlike in Democracies that country doesn't even attempt to have real Rule Of Law.
play stupid games win stupid prizes.

129 comments