Holding Hands, Drinking Wine and Other Ways to Go to Jail in Dubai
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A Scottish electrician named Jamie Harron, visiting Dubai as a tourist, was sentenced to three months in jail for touching a man in a bar.
The British head of a professional soccer team, David Haigh, was ordered jailed for seven months for a tweet that he says could not have been from him — since he was already in jail without a phone.
An Australian aid worker living in Dubai, Scott Richards, was locked up for trying to raise money to buy blankets for freezing Afghan children, because he was not part of a recognized charity.
Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, portrays itself as welcoming to foreigners. Its boosters claim it is the fourth most-visited tourism destination in the world, and it has at least 12 times as many foreign residents as citizens.
But a legal system based on a hard-line interpretation of Shariah law often lands foreigners in jail for offenses that few Westerners would dream were even crimes.
Recent examples cited by lawyers include holding hands in public; posting praise on Facebook for a charity opposed to fox hunting; drinking alcohol without a license; and sharing a hotel room with a person of the opposite sex (other than one’s spouse).
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