Bizarre, Criminal law, International

“Discover All That Is Possible In Dubai”: British Man Faces Three Years in Prison For Touching Hip Of Man In Bar

d4b4d820ee42fbb669867007f7d18569We have been discussing how Dubai is trying to lure Westerners to the country while it is continuing to impose the medieval Islamic Sharia system with predictably abusive results, particularly for women.  Recently we discussed how Dubai police arrested a 30-year-old Ethiopian woman after she gave birth to a child as an unmarried woman.  The latest bizarre case involved Briton Jamie Harron, 27, who is facing a possible three-year jail sentence over claims that he touched a man on the hip in a bar. He has already been given a month long sentence for drinking alcohol and making a rude gesture.

Dubai added to its medieval legal system with a trial in absentia that Harron says was never disclosed to him or his lawyer.  The latest charge arises from Harron touching the hip of a man at the bar. He says that he was trying to get around the man while trying not to spill his drink at the Rock Bottom Bar.

Police were called and Harron was arrested for public indecency and held for five days.  He has now been stuck in Dubai for three months, lost his job and is in debt to more than £30,000 in expenses and legal fees.

If that is not enticement enough to discover the thrills of vacationing in Dubai, here is their tourism site encouraging  you to “discover all that is possible in Dubai.” It turns out that a three-year-sentence for brushing against a man in a bar is just one of those things.

33 thoughts on ““Discover All That Is Possible In Dubai”: British Man Faces Three Years in Prison For Touching Hip Of Man In Bar”

  1. We’ll you cant discover all that is possible in Dubai. There are limitations to everything.

      1. When in Dubai you kinda sorta have to go out of your way to offend a real local (ie, an actual citizen of the UAE0. As a westerner, you are most likely drinking at a bar frequented by westerners and perhaps people from east Asia. It’s not as if you are sitting at the bar with Abdullah to the left of you and Ibrahim to the right. If it is an Abdullah or Ibrahim beside you, more likely than not, he’s a Saudi vacationing outside their kingdom and enjoying beverages that are illegal back home.

        I’d love to know more about the circumstances that got this guy in trouble. After all, we’re talking about Dubai. I know the stuff that goes on in Dubai.

        1. andrewWS, I’ll have to take your word for the place, as I’ve no desire to visit. I cannot find any info online that indicates the suspect went out of his way to offend anyone or break any laws, other than the ridiculous one that says you can drink in a bar, but you cannot have EtOH in your system. Public indecency? Bit of a stretch. Seems to me the laws are designed to entrap, and leave a lot of naive foreigners impoverished when they are finally given their passports back and allowed to go home. Kidnapping by justice system.

          1. First things first, if you are visiting UAE then you are not surrendering your passport. If you are there to work and you are working for a reputable firm, then they aren’t going to take your passport. I will admit, a great many third world workers do have their passports confiscated upon arrival and are essentially slaves to the remittance economy.

            I’ve been to Dubai many times. It is true that if you are out in public and have alcohol in your system, you will be arrested. That’s why it is safer to drink in the hotel bar. However, let’s say I was staying at the Marriott downtown and decided to visit with friends staying in a hotel on the coast. Safest way to avoid trouble would be to hire a cab or driver so that I could step out of the bar and into a vehicle. Did that plenty of times with no issues.

            Had I gone out for drinks and taken the subway or decided to hike it back to my room, then chances are a green and white SUV would have eventually pulled up and my next stop would be the jail located (oddly enough) across the street from the Marriott downtown.

            Dubai is an amazing place with lots to see and do. As the old saying goes, when in Rome. If you ever do go there just keep in mind that you aren’t in the states and if you get hemmed up by the locals, nobody is going to burn half of downtown down during riots held in your name the way people seem to want to do here in the states 🙂

            1. AndrewWS, the suspect, Jamie, had his passport taken away when he was arrested. That’s what I meant. Thanks for the info re:visiting.

  3. I’ve visited Dubai many, many times. I’ve enjoyed drinks in bars. I’ve never encountered trouble. I have to wonder where he was drinking and what foolishness he engaged himself in.

      1. Probably. Best way to avoid trouble in Dubai is to drink in the hotel bar or those close to it. If he was lost in the sauce and meandering where ever, then that’s why he was hemmed up.

  4. No sympathy for the dopes, dupes, and dummies that visit ANY Islamic nation. There was a time long, long ago when Hollywood actually educated the public about Islam. Even those with predilections toward the Left understood what Islam was about in those days.

    Take Oliver Stone, who wrote the screenplay for “Midnight Express,” which depicts the horrors of Islamic “justice.” Of course, back then, Leftism did not totally subsume everything, and that’s when Stone was actually able to write or make some good movies. You can see Stone is the poster child of the disease of Leftism. Since he became more and more absorbed into Leftism, his movies have gotten progressively worse. And now, he cannot make a movie of even passing quality to save his life.

    So, let’s take a trip down memory lane when Hollywood actually told some truths about Islam and their “legal system” before Hollywood’s love affair with Islam destroyed Hollywood:

    1. Take Oliver Stone, who wrote the screenplay for “Midnight Express,” which depicts the horrors of Islamic “justice.”

      No, it depicts the ugliness of the Turkish penal system and criminal procedure, which was at the time Kemalist – i.e. self-consciously secular. The film departs from his written memoir a great deal. (Hayes had no hostility to the judges in his case; his speech to the court was a screenwriter’s invention).

      BTW. Prisons in poor countries aren’t plush.

      1. No, the ugliness of the Islamic penal system was not limited to Turkey and Stone’s script actually specifically targets Islam. Consider, for example, the following line in the speech: “For a nation of pigs, it’s funny you
        don’t eat them.” That was not specific to Turkey and audiences did not take it that way. In fact, as a response to the success of this movie, American tourism of ALL Muslim nations dropped significantly. Americans got the message.

        As for whether or not the movie departs from reality, that isn’t my point and is irrelevant to the discussion. My point is how radically Hollywood has changed—for the worse. There was a time when Hollywood actually told some truths about Islam. Now, Hollywood engages in nonstop Islamopandering and lies about Islam and, thereby, advances the interests of the terrorists and the profiteers in terrorism.

        1. No, the ugliness of the Islamic penal system was not limited to Turkey and Stone’s script actually specifically targets Islam.

          Doesn’t matter if he ‘targets Islam’. Turkey had, prior to 2002, a self-consciously secular government that went out of its way to harass Islamic political organizations.

          1. Your thoughts are truly inspiring. Not. ZZZZzzzzzzZZZ zzzzZZZZZZZ ZZZZzzzz zzzzzZZZZ zzzzZZZZZ.

    2. Dubai is what I”d call quasi-Islamic. Sure, they broadcast prayer call in the malls and stuff but most people continue strolling about. There are bars and all the rest in the city. And, some true 5 star and above resorts.

  5. It’s amazing to me that anyone would voluntarily wish to visit Dubai. There was an instructive story last year about a man who visited from the Bay Area. Apparently upon arrival passengers go through a high-tech cannabis detector and this guy had some weed dust or pollen on the bottom of his shoes…3 years in prison.

    1. Outrageous! Truman knew how to make friends and “influence” people. Truman adjusted the demeanor of Japan. It’s too bad that Truman failed to understand that it was imperative then to resolutely admonish and use his “influence” to halt the global proliferation of misdemeanors. We would not be experiencing the North Korea effect today if he hadn’t.

    2. No, English Midlands, not Bay Area.

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-512815/Briton-jailed-years-Dubai-customs-cannabis-weighing-grain-sugar-shoe.html

      They’re kidnapping foreign travelers and holding them arbitrarily. Dubai is heavily dependent on revenue as a banking center and trade entrepot. This will stop when occidental countries get together and put the screws to them.

      I doubt you could find a provision in Sharia which would justify jailing a man for a minute quantity of contraband he could not have known was there and might have picked up at random on the street. It’s a mix of arrogance and stupidity at work. Dubai needs to be told they can be arrogant and stupid or they can live under a ban on financial transactions.

  6. You’re confounding several phenomena in your complaint. The substance of Sharia law is not necessarily at issue here.

    The trouble here is nonsensical law, substantive and procedural. They permit liquor to be vended, then prosecute him for having liquor in his system. The procedure is designed to display contempt and petty cruelty, not to regulate a fact-finding procedure.

  8. He’s lucky.

    My father was taken to Chop Chop square as “entertainment”, I suppose, when he was there for the Pentagon. 2 gay men were beheaded. It deeply affected him, and his opinion of Sharia Law. Dubai is a bit more cosmopolitan on the outside, but anything even remotely suspect of homosexuality is an extremely serious offense in the ME. Dubai is also infamous for the abuse of foreign domestic female workers.

    PSA – do not travel anywhere in the ME if you are gay or lesbian. Sorry, Turkey is sliding down the black hole of extremism, too, no matter what the level of the law says. Stay safe. Some adventures are just tragedies waiting to happen.

        1. The thing about Israel is that polls of the Israeli public have repeatedly shown that they want the law to be changed to permit same-sex marriages. I would guess that the reason that the Israeli government refuses to yield to the public will on this point is that the government operates under the misguided assumption that if same-sex marriages are legal, the procreation rate of Israelis will decline and Israel’s survival will be threatened. But this is just a guess on my part that could explain the anomaly.

          1. Again. Personal status in Israel is adjudicated by denominational tribunals which do not recognize homosexual pseudogamy. There is no civil marriage in Israel, so there can be no parodies of civil marriage.

            As for the polls, they were commissioned by a cheesy advocacy group and they excluded the gentile population. Not worth the paper the press release was printed on.

      2. Good catch, Suze. Israel is indeed a Western nation in the Middle East surrounded by neighbors that want them destroyed.

        1. Paramilitary organizations (Hezbollah, Al Fatah, Hamas). That might be popular opinion in Egypt. It hasn’t been government policy in decades, nor is it in Jordan. Syria’s in ruins right now. Most of Lebanon’s political spectrum has had no interest (for upwards of 60 years) in conflict with Israel. The country which wants to kill Jews is one that is not a neighbor, Iran.

  9. The UAE is on my list of place NOT to visit. He should have checked with me first.

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