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British tourist sentenced to three months in Dubai jail for ‘insulting’ airport staff (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by 01011@monero.town to c/world@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 11 months ago

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!

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

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.

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this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023

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