26/02/2008 00:00:00
UAE Dubai: Briton in the clear
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A British youth worker who was jailed in Dubai for having a microscopic
speck of cannabis on his shoe has been pardoned. Father-of-three Andrew
Brown is now back home after his early release from a four-year prison
term. Last September, immigration officials seized the 43-year-old at
Dubai Airport as he waited for a connecting flight to the UK.
They searched his suitcases and found cannabis weighing 0.003g - less
than a grain of sugar - on the sole of his shoe. The Rastafarian, from
Birmingham, said: “I was returning from a holiday in Ethiopia to mark
the Rastafarian millennium when everything went very wrong. “I was
waiting in the lounge in Dubai for our connection back to England when
an immigration official came up to me and asked to search me for drugs.
I was stripped and searched.
“Then they started going through my luggage. One said they had found a
tiny bit of cigarette paper on my shoes and that was it.” It is
understood officials found cannabis on the paper. Brown added: “Before
I knew it I’d been processed in a detention centre and sentenced to four
years in prison. I had to face the fact I could be spending the next
four years there, so I got my head down… but I felt utterly depressed. I
felt completely hopeless.”
Brown thought his fate was sealed after the British Embassy said they
could not help him, but last week he was pardoned and allowed to return
home.
Brown said: “One moment I was going about my prison life as usual and
the next I was on a plane back to Heathrow.” The mandatory sentence for
anyone caught with drugs in Dubai is four years in jail.
http://www.7days.ae/en/2008/02/26/briton-in-the-clear.html
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=13311
Author:
7 Days via UKCIA
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