British passport holders are proportionately more likely to be arrested in the UAE than they are in any other nation apart from the US and Cyprus, according to a new report cited by UAE daily The National on Monday.
Last year, 230 Britons were imprisoned in the Emirates, including 59 for drugs offences, figures from the Foreign Office in London show, the paper said.
Fifty Britons were apprehended in Abu Dhabi last year, 19 for drugs crimes, it added.The paper quoted Catherine Wolthuizen, chief executive of Fair Trials International, as saying that the number of drug arrests was down to the highly sensitive new equipment that customs officials use to conduct searches on travellers.
“So many people now travel to Dubai and, as we’re seeing, many have no idea what risks they’re taking or their vulnerability to this very strict approach,” she says. “If they find any amount – no matter how minute – it will be enough to attract a mandatory four-year prison sentence.
“What many travellers may not realise is that they can be deemed to be in possession of such banned substances if they can be detected in their urine or bloodstream, or even in tiny, trace amounts on their person.”
Raymond Bingham, also known as DJ Grooverider, was among those arrested for drugs offences last year. The Radio 1 broadcaster was jailed for four years in February after being caught at Dubai International Airport three months earlier with a small amount of cannabis and a pornographic DVD in his luggage.
Keith Brown, a British tourist, was also sentenced to four years in prison after Dubai customs officers found a 0.003g trace of cannabis stuck to his shoe.
The figures also suggested that Britons were more likely to seek consular assistance in the UAE than they were anywhere else, the paper said.
Last year, British consular staff in the Emirates were asked for help on 3,597 occasions, a total surpassed only by the Uunited States (8,304) and Spain (7,590), both of which have many more UK visitors, the paper repoted.
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