The 23-year-old British Law student, Mia O’Brien, who has been incarcerated in Dubai for what some outlets are saying is possession of an illegal substance, has drawn a spotlight to the country’s harsh Al-Awir central prison.
O’Brien left the UK around October 2024, and according to her mother, Danielle McKenna, 46, she fell in with the wrong group of friends.
In an effort to raise funds to visit O’Brien in jail, McKenna started a GoFundMe page only to have it shut down by the platform.
The UAE does not give its prisoners free calls
Image credits: GoFundMe
The Al-Awir central prison is so infamous that it has an entire human rights organization dedicated to it.
Said organization, Detained in Dubai, explains the process of getting arrested in the Middle Eastern territory:
“You will be taken to the police station that is local to where the incident occurred. Where no-one will tell you much, and you’ll end up in one of the cells, these aren’t particularly nice places and everyone will try to rip you off.”
An interviewee by the name of Simon went on to say that the country’s penal system gives no such thing as free phone calls after an arrest, and even if they did, it was pointless phoning an embassy as there is nothing they can do.
One person who has been through the system warned that lying to a public prosecutor will only make things worse
Image credits: Getty Images/Unsplash
Finding a free bed in a police station cell is impossible unless crime and arrests are slow.
And even then, getting a mattress and blanket ought to be considered a lucky find.
“The showers are disgusting, the toilets even worse,” Simon observes and goes on to say that arrested individuals may be “offered bail at this point […] but usually [they] won’t.”
“By law you MUST be seen by the public prosecutor within 48 hours of arrest (unless unfit by drink, injury or [substances]), in order to satisfy this requirement, you will be seen by a police officer within 24 hours of your arrest where you will be asked about the circumstances of the incident.”
“TELL THE TRUTH,” he warned. “It’ll be worse for you if you don’t.”
A British national was beaten for wearing a Qatari shirt, then locked up when he tried to press charges
Image credits: Gulf News
The experiences of Ali Issa Ahmad, a British-Sudanese, suggests otherwise. He insisted that he told the truth and yet received the harshest imaginable deal.
In 2019, he was beaten by security for wearing a Qatari shirt to a football match–an action that is frowned upon due to an ongoing rivalry between the neighboring country and the UAE.
Ahmad decided to escalate the matter and press charges, but the police claimed he was lying and locked him away for wasting their time.
The UAE has a 90 percent conviction rate
Image credits: Gulf News
Upon being found guilty in the UAE, which is 90 percent of the time, the individual gets shuttled off to the Central Al-Awir Prison, where they are searched, given white scrubs and assigned to a 96-bunk “amber.”
Once again, there is a slim chance of getting a bed, and more often than not, the newcomer will have to make do with a dirty blanket on the floor.
Another person to endure the prison was Leeds Football Club’s ex-managing director David Haigh, who claimed he was arrested on false fraud charges and spent 22 months in the facility.
Image credits: Gulf News
He remembered asking for painkillers and getting hit over the head with a broom.
A former Leeds football boss was hit over the head with a broom when he asked for painkillers
But being attacked, for him, was nowhere near as distressing as seeing other prisoners being mishandled.
He recalled: “I remember an occasion where they brought a man in from the street, threw him on the floor and stood on his neck, three of them.
Another person to experience the facility’s alleged hellish conditions was a British expat by the name of Albert Douglas.
Image credits: Gulf News
His son Wolfgang had fled to the United Kingdom when his cheques bounced, and so Albert was arrested and charged with a string of “trumped up charges” including trying to scale a border fence between the UAE and Qatar.
Young men are hung upside down and beaten for sport
“The jails over there are not like the jails here. Torture is Monday for them.” Wolfgang explained.
“He did not commit a crime to begin with, he lost faith in the law and that is why he tried to escape [to Qatar].”
Image credits: GoFundMe
“He was brought to a prison where he was beaten so badly that afterwards, he would bleed from his ears.”
Men younger than Douglas endure another kind of punishment.
“Twenty-year-old boys in his cell were being hung upside down and beaten for sport,” Wolfgang told Detained in Dubai (via the UK Sun), while the inmate using the bunk below his father “had his privates burnt off with blowtorches to get confessions.”
Douglas is paying for the crimes of his
Image credits: GoFundMe
In April 2021, Wolfgang released a statement saying, “I am innocent and being made to pay the penalty for the debts of my son. I would not wish this on my worst enemy.”
O’Brien is serving her life sentence at the same facility, which comprises three male blocks and a female quarters.
According to British outlets, the 23-year-old law student’s crime was that she was discovered with 50 grams of an illegal recreational substance.
The internet appears to be focusing on the fact that O’Brien is a lawyer
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