Nearly Free

So the good news today is that Tracy Lewis, the codeine lady, has been acquitted. The bad news is that she may have to hang around for a fortnight while the Public Prosecution decide whether they want to appeal the verdict. Given the sensitivity of this case, they may make their decision very quickly, in which case she will be free to go.

What a shambles. I am disgusted and totally ashamed by this case. The lady has had to spend eight weeks in jail for nothing! I know that the UK legal system is capable of similar cock-ups and miscarriages of justice, but not generally over an issue of such doubtful criminality. By which I mean that in this case what she did is nothing like a crime in most of the rest of world, it is only made a crime because for some obscure reason codiene is a controlled drug in this country.

Another interesting, possibly related article in today's Gulf News . Four doctors have been deported for alledgedly selling prescriptions for (unspecified) narcotic drugs to anyone who wanted them.

A psychiatrist commented to Gulf News:
"As a medical professional I am outraged at such conduct but some of these arrests are set up by the police. Drug enforcement agencies send a patient who falsely claims he is sick. We, as doctors, are sometimes duped by the informants and write them prescriptions. How are we supposed to know they are making up these symptoms?"

How often do you see reports on criminal activity in this parish that include the phrase 'the suspect was arrested in a sting operation'? It seems to me that CID spend more time turning innocent people into 'criminals' than they do in chasing the actual wicked perps that are running loose out there. It ticks me off, so it do.

The Codeine Case

Today's papers are saying that the unfortunate lady in this case has been released on 'bail'. Previous reports of her having been sentenced to four years are, apparently, somewhat inaccurate.

This whole story has acquired something of a surreal quality - almost every aspect of it is surrounded in ambiguity and confusion, and today it was revealed that even her name has been erroneously reported.

It's unusual for 'bail' to be granted in drug-related cases. I put the word in inverted commas because both the name and the nature of this concept are a bit different than what we are familiar with in the West. Suspects can be released from custody if another person surrenders their passport to the Court. This passport must contain a valid residence visa. In the event that the suspect absconds then the person whose passport has been surrendered becomes in effect a stand-in for the suspect and can be arrested and punished as if he was the original perp. I've never heard of anyone posting a financial bond.

So I wonder who has put their passport in to get this lady out?

She complains that there is no presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and indeed this is the case. The one thing that drives me nuts about this country (apart from the other 14,723 things) is just how easy it is to get thrown in jail, and how very difficult it seems to be to get your message across to the Judge. All Court proceedings take place in Arabic. This is fair enough, it is the official language of the country. Defendants are not normally allowed to speak in the court. All communication takes place through your advocate. Your advocate may or may not have a good grasp of English - the law is one profession here where being able to spikka da Inglese does not matter. It's a heavily paper-based exercise. I don't think that witnesses are ever asked to appear in court, but they can submit a written you-know-what. And there is no jury.

I know half-a-dozen people who have spent time in jail here either for fairly trivial offences ('insulting a local' is a good catch-all) or just being held while an investigation is being conducted. In all three of the latter situations the accused were acquitted.

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I guess this is the price we pay for living in a very safe society, but paradoxically I feel more at risk of imprisonment by the legal establishment than I do of being mugged or robbed.

Codeine

More on the codeine case in today's Gulf News. Her lawyer is insisting that she has not been sentenced, and GN insists that their source at the courts says she has. Khaleej Times is not covering the story directly, but has paraphrased (and named!) Gulf News in its story. And secretdubai is pretty upset by it.

Travel Advisory

The British Foreign Office is advising potential travellers to the UAE to ensure that they do not bring medicines containing codeine into the UAE. Codeine is banned here, and possession of it carries a maximum four year jail sentence. But here's the thing, 'possession' is deemed to occur even if you have consumed the stuff some time previously (and someplace else on the planet) and are still carrying traces of it in your wee or your blood. And here's the other thing, in the UK and most of the rest of the world, products containing codeine are available by prescription and in some cases directly over the counter from a pharmacist.

Yesterday a British visitor to Dubai was sentenced to four years in jail because she was found to have taken codeine. This is somewhat shocking, especially as she had been prescribed the med by a doctor in the UK, did not physically bring any tablets into the country, and probably did not have the slightest idea that it would be a problem here.

Come to that, I've lived here for 11 years, and was only vaguely aware that some commonplace Western meds are banned in the UAE. But I had absolutely no idea that 'possession' could carry a four year jail sentence. I can't say exactly what I think about this (I'm pretty sure there's a BlogCop Division at CID), but I think I can say that this sentence does nobody any good, and if it gets major publicity in the UK it will certainly damage the Dubai tourist trade.

Nobody wants to visit a country where you can get thrown in jail so easily for something that you did completely legally in your own country.

See Scotland on Sunday and Gulf News .