Traffic fines discount

It seems that Dubai police are about to follow some other emirates and offer discounts on traffic offence fines.

I'm struggling to understand how that will help to improve the standard of driving.


Gulf News has the report here.

Silence on property 'residence visa'

At the end of last month I was talking here about the new so-called 'residence visa' for property owners, which the media and real estate spokespeople were lauding as a great move forward.

It was nothing of the sort of course, and not even a residence visa. It was a three year multi-entry visit visa for which, in spite of all the applause, we were given no details.

We were told that holders would have to leave the country every six months...which was 'clarified' a few days later by a statement that holders would not have to leave every six months.

The only other information was that holders would need proof of a bank account either here or overseas and a salary of Dh10,000 a month, and the visa would only apply to property 'worth Dh1 million'. They would also have to have medical insurance renewable every six months (strange) and take a medical here every two years.

But the real detail that property owners, and potential buyers, need wasn't, and still hasn't, been given. The announcement was made, then nothing.

Value of property for example. Based on what? The original price paid?  Even with the burst bubble, apartments in my building that were originally bought for Dh450,000 are currently over Dh1 million - and they've been much higher than that of course. But if the original purchase price is the yardstick, none of the owners qualify for the visa.

Or is it based on current value?  Two problems with that. One, who decides what current value is? Two, value fluctuates all the time depending on many factors. Something that's worth a million today may be worth less than a million in a month's time if interests rates go up, mortgages become even more difficult to find, a large supply of similar apartments is released.

Then as it isn't a residence visa, can holders apply for all the things that require a res. visa, such as a driving licence, DEWA connections and so on? Or are they treated the same as other visit visa holders?

And what's the cost? The original plan for a six month visa required the holder to exit the country and apply for a new visa to come back in...at Dh2,000 a time. That soon adds up if it's a family on the visa. We had no indication of the cost of the latest version.

Far from helping the real estate sector, this kind of part announcement leaving vital questions unanswered damages it even more.

Oh good, clarification.

Gulf News is pressing on with reports about what they present as the great new residence visa for foreign property owners.

As I pointed out last Wednesday, it ain't a residence visa, it's a multi-entry visit visa available to some property owners. With lots of conditions - many of them not announced yet.

Today GN has a story headed 'New residence visa will increase flexibility for real estate investors'.

Oh yeah?

The story includes some of the usual 'clarification' that we're so used to.

Last Wednesday Gulf News quoted Maj. Gen. Nasser Bin Al Awadi Al Menhali, Assistant Undersecretary for Naturalisation, Residence & Port Affairs, as saying: "Investors who own property worth Dh1 million can get three year mutiple-entry visit visas. However, they have to exit the country every six months".

Today they quote 'senior government officials' as saying: "The visa...will allow property investors to sponsor their families and stay in the UAE for three years without leaving."

So they either have to exit the country every six months or they don't. Wait for more 'clarification'.

As for the unannounced conditions, Major General Nasser Bin Al Awadi Al Menhali has told Gulf News that the full details of the law would be made public soon.


The report goes on to point out that: "It is still unclear if the visa provides investors all the usual benefits of a residence visa, such as enabling them to open bank accounts and apply for local driving licences."

Another thing that's unclear is the Dh1 million 'value' of the property. Is that the price paid or the value now? And if it's the value now, who fixes the value?

Deja vu.  It's exactly as happened with the original six month visit visa, exitedly welcomed but misrepresented by the media and the real estate industry as a residence visa that would restore confidence and increase sales. They're again wildly enthusiastic, presenting the latest incarnation as the answer to many of the problems of the real estate sector and investors.

Take a deep breath fellas. We have conflicting information, the law isn't issued yet, the details haven't been announced, we don't know how it's going to work.




The Gulf News report here.

Property visa changes - again

When foreigners were told they could buy property in designated areas of Dubai, a residence visa - subject to the usual DNRD requirements - was included as an added inducement to invest in the emirate.

But the goalposts were moved after the game was well under way.

The standard three year residence visa suddenly was no longer available. It was replaced by a six month visit visa - hardly fair to those who'd invested their money on the original basis. It was also a bad decision in relation to both confidence in Dubai being a good place to do business and in supporting the by-then crashed real estate sector.

Now that bad decision has been reversed, partially at least.

A three year visa is again offered, but it's still only a visit visa not a residence visa.

Gulf News quotes Maj. Gen. Nasser Bin Al Awadi Al Menhali, Assistant Undersecretary for Naturalisation, Residence & Port Affairs, as saying: "Investors who own property worth Dh1 million can get three year mutiple-entry visit visas. However, they have to exit the country every six months".

The Khaleej Times report adds that a property owner applying for the visa: "...also needs to open a bank account locally or aboard and is required to provide proof of a minimum monthly income of Dh10,000. The investor shall also get a medical insurance renewable every six months, apart from a valid medical fitness test every two years."

It's a step in the right direction but it still misses the target. It needs to be a true residence visa. And it needs to be simple.

Judges and bloggers of one mind

Many of us have discussed on our blogs for years the sentences handed down for public indecency offences. While we accept that different cultures have different sensibilities it's hard to understand how an offence such as an alleged rude hand gesture can result in far more severe punishment than a real crime such as robbery.

A very interesting report appeared in The National yesterday including comments from several judges about the sentences they often hand down for people found guilty of indecency.


"Public decency laws need to be reformed so that punishments can more accurately reflect the severity of the offence, several judges have said."


I've questioned in various posts on the subject whether the courts had any discretion in the sentences they hand down, or whether they are mandatory. The judges quoted in the report have answered that.

"While sentencing guidelines for more serious crimes allow judges discretion in weighing the facts of a particular case, guidelines for minor crimes concerning public decency often force them into overly harsh sentences."

"An expatriate who has committed an offence such as raising his hand in a bad gesture should be punished, but not by destroying his chances of returning to this country to make a living," one lower court judge said. More serious crimes such as theft were not punished by deportation, he pointed out."



The courts have taken some stick, especially in the overseas press, over their draconian sentencing but it seems they have little room for discretion.


In fact judges, or at least some of them, seem to be of the same opinion as us.


It's a fascinating insight into the legal system here in The National.

More on the law

I was going to post about this earlier in the week but decided to wait for more information and for the muddy waters to clear. It's still all very murky but we know a bit more now.

Sadly it's another in a long line of victim jailed cases such as I posted about a few days ago.

Back in Australia there was a hearing in Brisbane Supreme Court on Friday of last week when lawyers acting for a young Queensland woman, Alicia Gali, were given leave to sue Fujeirah's Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort for breaching its workplace obligations and failing to have systems in place to protect their workers against assault.

That opened a can of worms.

On Monday it was in the news, with headlines like:

Drugged, raped, then jailed for 'adultery' 
and
Queensland woman tells of her jail hell in United Arab Emirates

The details are murky but it goes back to 2008, when Alicia reported to police that she had been raped by three co-workers at the hotel after they spiked her drink in the hotel staff bar.

It seems the three men were not charged with rape but they and Alicia were found guilty of illicit sex, and presumably consuming alcohol.

Alicia got a year in Al Slammer and served eight months before being pardoned.

She claimed she had no assistance from her employer or the embassy, which the hotel immediately denied. They issued a statement that they had helped 'including assisting with medical support, arranging for financial support, assistance with the investigation, liaising with her representative embassy and arranging for her family to come to the UAE from Australia'.  

The following day her lawyers refuted those claims.

I told you it was all very murky. It'll get worse as the case progresses too with the international spotlight firmly on the laws here and the way they're administered. Let's hope it brings about some changes.



BTW, if you read the stories I've linked to below you'll see they contain warnings against travelling to the UAE. The only news outlet here I've seen the story in is Arabian Business, who simultaneously reported a UK survey in which Dubai came fifth in a survey which asked travellers which destinations they felt most at risk in.

That's strange about a country that's one of the world's safest, but it's not safety in relation to muggings or violence against them they're concerned about. It has to be the regular reports of people being jailed for consuing alcohol, for verbal insults, for giving the finger and of victims being jailed that cause the concern.





Here's the first story and also
here.
Hotel defends itself.
Not true say lawyers.

Dubai not safe survey.

More on the law

If you haven't read yesterday's post, please do so before reading this one.

I think that sometimes the problem is the way the law is administered rather than the law itself.

In his comment on my last posting, Alexander called it 'a system that runs on rails to an insane degree', which pretty well sums it up.


But there are other examples where it is the law itself that's the problem and there's an example of what I consider to be a bad law reported in this morning's Gulf News.

A tragedy that happens world-wide is that little children are run down in their own driveways by their parents, especially when they're reversing large 4x4s.

I can't even begin to imagine the sickening horror the parents experience.

In the UAE, more horror is piled on top of that horror.

An Australian father has been charged with accidentally and unintentionally causing the death of his son after reversing his car and running over the toddler at the entrance to his house in Umm Suqeim.

The prosecutors are all showing sympathy and asking that he should be dealt with leniently.

...the law must be applied with a humane touch," said Salah Bu Farousha, Chief Traffic Prosecutor, while arguing for a compassionate and sympathetic view of the case, and asked the court to consider the emotional state of the father and the exceptional circumstances of the case to pass a light punishment...Upon the directives of Dubai's Attorney General Essam Eisa Al Humaidan, prosecutors ask a judge to be sympathetic...In such cases, we frequently ask the court to implement Articles 83 and 84 of the law, which stipulate that a fine or an imprisonment against suspects convicted in such cases could be suspended for three years.

There's been a death in a traffic accident so it's fair enough that there's a police investigation. If dangerous or reckless driving is involved then a case should be brought against the driver. 

But to have 'accidentally and unintentionally' as a crime is another thing all together. And in this instance there is no suggestion that it was anything other than a tragic accident.

Prosecutor Salah Bu Farousha said the law must be applied with a humane touch. But they shouldn't have to ask the court for leniency, it should never reach court. A true humane touch would be for such a terrible accident not to be treated as a criminal act.



The story is in Gulf News here.

Report a crime, go to jail

There's a disturbing example of the way the legal system can be administered, reported by Gulf News yesterday.

If the story is correct, not for the first time the victim reporting a crime has spent time in Al Slammer.

In summary, when meeting friends at a hotel a young German woman was offered sweets. She felt dizzy and uncomfortable immediately after she ate a sweet and blood tests confirmed she'd been given a drug.

She reported the incident to police, who set up a sting operation which resulted in a man being punished and deported.


All witnesses and law enforcement officers confirmed that she was the one who reported the matter to the police. Forensic doctors confirmed that the drugs which appeared in her blood could have resulted from the sweet she ate.

On Thursday she appeared in court after five months in jail.

After five months in jail.

You have to ask why she was in jail in the first place and why it took five months to get the case to court.

There've been similar cases in the past which have attracted scathing criticism in international media, and rightly so.

On every level it's absolutely the wrong thing to do.

On a moral level it's indefensible to lock up a victim.

It can't be right to keep someone in jail for five months before bringing them to court.

It's counter-productive in the fight against crime. People won't report crime for fear they'll be jailed themselves.

It further harms Dubai's reputation, already under sustained attack by sections of the western media.

And still she's not free. The woman was released on bail, had to surrender her passport and, as the report says, the trial continues.


Gulf News has the full court report here.

Clarification needed

It's all too frequent that the papers report an extremely important subject with an utterly confusing article.

There's another one from what is no longer Emirates Business 24/7 but emirates247.com

It's about freehold property ownership in Dubai, a subject important to a lot of people.

Going back to the property boom beginnings, Sheikh Mohammed decreed that non-GCC foreigners could buy freehold property in special designated areas.

I think I'm right in saying that of the emirates offering property ownership to foreigners only Dubai declared it to be freehold. The others offered leasehold of 99 years.

In the Court of Cassation there was a case involving a property dispute between two expat owners of a villa.

According to emirates247, during the case the court ruled that ...in some areas such as freehold property, expatriates have the right of ownership limited with time...have the right to use property (rent or live in it) or alternatively possess right to rent for a period not exceeding 99 years.

Then an even more mystifying: The Ruler's decree is a command and ownership cases require immediate retroactive action, ruled the court.

What?

So freehold property was offered, many people bought on that basis, now the Court of Cassation seems to have declared that it's actually leasehold.

It's not the clearest article you'll ever read but I'm sure that's what it's saying.

I'm sure everyone who bought on the basis of their property being freehold would like some clarification.

The article is here.

Stupid me!

I really should have learnt by now...wait for the 'clarification'.

Before commenting, wait twenty-four hours after an official statement has been made and published because it's almost guaranteed that a 'clarification' is on the way.

Yesterday I posted about the lifting of the ban on fifty-seven job titles not being allowed to sponsor their families.

Within twenty-four hours a 'clarification' was issued which denied the ban had been lifted.

I quote from the 'clarification' in The National:

"UAE officials have denied a report that expatriates from 57 different work categories would now be allowed to get visas for their families to live here.

The ban on certain lower-income occupations being eligible for visa sponsorship has not been lifted they said."

The officals giving the clarification are anonymous, the original statement was from Major General Nasser Al Awadi Al Menhali, Assistant Undersecretary for Naturalisation, Residency and Ports Affairs at the Ministry of Interior.

An ongoing story perhaps, so let's wait for the 'clarification' of the 'clarification' which could well be being prepared as I write.


Here's the clarification.

Thanks for the comments on my previous post which alerted me to the 'clarification'.

Good & bad

A couple of stories in today's Gulf News relate to subjects I posted about last year. One's good news, the other I don't understand.

The good news is that the strange list of fifty-seven occupations barred from sponsoring family members has at long last been changed.

It was always strange to me that sales people, mechanics, butchers, drivers, tailors, cooks and many more were discriminated against on the basis of their profession, regardless of how much money they earned. Putting a minimum wage requirement on sponsoring makes sense to me, to ensure that the family can be looked after, but to ban people from from having their family with them based on their occupation I don't understand.

Anyway, the ban is lifted provided that the would-be sponsor lodges a deposit of Dh5,000 per sponsored person. That's a lot of money to them but at least they now have the option.

The other story is about a Pakistani visitor who'll be spending ten years in Al Slammer, was fined Dh50,000 and will be deported after his jail term. He'll be pleased to be deported I should think, to get the hell out of here.

His dastardly crime? He was convicted of drug running. He brought in 123 grammes of...wait for it...poppy seeds.

Back in January last year I posted this pic...



Bagels sold in Spinneys smothered in grammes of...wait for it...poppy seeds.

I must have a look to see if they still have them on sale.

I haven't read about the Drug Squad raiding Spinneys. Or anybody from Spinneys heirachy languishing in Al Slammer. Why not?

Is it a law that needs changing? I think so.


My earlier posts are here and here. Today's stories in Gulf News are here and here.

Storm in a B cup

You'll have read by now about the classy British female tourist who stripped off down to her bikini and paraded around Dubai Mall.

It was in response to being told she was originally dressed too revealingly, breaking the mall rules.

The woman's clothes "were so short and revealing, close to a bikini. Such outfits are not permitted in shopping malls or family-oriented public areas," said Colonel Al Razouqi (Dubai CID)

"She was wearing very revealing clothes as it is, and decided to dress down further after she was approached" said a Dubai Mall official.

As usual there are different versions of events.

According to the UK Daily Mail which broke the story:

"Briton held for wearing a bikini in Dubai shopping mall after fight with Arabic woman.

...she was accosted by an Arabic woman...

The mall's security team then intervened and called the police, who arrested the British holidaymaker."

According to a mall spokesman and Dubai Police, reported in Gulf News:

"A group of Gulf national women recently tried to enforce a dress code morally acceptable to them by distributing leaflets to women they found to be dressed inappropriately, a Dubai Mall official said.

Colonel Dr Mohammad Nasser Al Razouqi, Deputy Director of the Criminal Investigations Department for Police Station Affairs, told Gulf News the incident was a "minor" argument in Dubai Mall.

"We called in both women to the police station to resolve the matter amicably. We didn't charge the Briton or open a case against her," he said."

So there we have it. A fight/accosted or a minor argument. Arrested or no charge/no case opened.

As always I love the revealing reader comments section of the Daily Mail story. You might well roll around with laughter at many of them, as I did. Like these:

"They can wear what they like in our country - why shouldn't the same courtesy be extended to us in their country?"

"Good for that British woman for making a stand."

"if we cant wear bikinis in their country why can they wear burkas in ours?"

She was, you'll remember, strutting around a city centre mall in a bikini.

I'll refrain (for once) from offering my opinion on the comments because I think I might devote a new post to the subject in the next day or two.

But I will say I have to agree with George, who said that on his trips to Dubai he'd noticed it had become Chav City.


Here's the version of events from the Daily Mail.

And here's the version from Gulf News.

"Loans threaten residency"

That's the lead story in today's Gulf News, with a related report on page three.

They begin with these paras:

"Residency departments will not renew the residence visas of expatriates if they are wanted by police for financial obligations, Interior Ministry officials said."

"Residency departments cannot punish people who have arrest warrants against them for financial disputes by not renewing their residence visas, legal experts have said."

I'm not going to comment now because tomorrow there's bound to be a 'clarification'.



See what you make of it. You can read the reports here and here.

Car dumping

The reality behind that very silly tabloid story of thousands of cars left at the airport by fleeing expats is that abandoning cars is par for the course in this area.

There are figures based on reports from banks, car dealers and the police that about 1400 cars a year on average are abandoned around Dubai.

I guess the reason for the phenomenon is a combination of factors.It's a very transient society with people moving in or leaving every day. People come here 'for a couple of years', or they decide they don't like it and leave, or their contract finishes or, in more recent times, they lose their job.

Then there's the draconian debtor law.

And the time & frustration involved in doing anything like selling a car.

People borrow money from a bank to buy their car. Then for whatever reason they leave Dubai.

The easy way out is to think of the payments as a car rental or lease...and just leave it where you last parked it.

The giveaway is the amount of dust on the car.

Those left while the owners are on holiday get a layer of dust, but it's not too thick and it's cleaned off as soon as they get back.

Others though have a thick layer and they start to attract message writers.

In just over one kilometre in Dubai Marina this morning I saw a few that could still be holiday cars, but there are others in the thick dust category. It's quite a few abandoned cars for a short stretch of road:

But they're not all from Dubai:

And this BMW is a permanent fixture. It had already been there for months when I first posted about it in August 2009.

Here it is this morning...

Clampdown on dangerous driving

I don't think I need to comment or give my opinion on this.

You'll probably remember the 'driving stunts on Sheikh Zayed Road' story. I posted about it in May if you want to remind yourself of the details.

Briefly, in a victory parade along the country's busiest road by Al Wasl football club supporters, two drivers were filmed with their vehicles up on two wheels, performing doughnuts and other manouvres entirely inappropriate for a public road.

They've had their support, by bloggers and in comments, who said the road was closed for the official police-sanctioned parade so they did nothing wrong. Their lawyer also said that the road was closed.

While it was a police-sanctioned official parade the fact is that the road was not closed. As you can clearly see in the video, other motorists were using it.

Anyway, the drivers were in court yesterday, charged with reckless and dangerous driving and intentionally endangering the lives of others.

Gulf News says they were convicted of reckless driving while intentionally endangering the lives of others but The National says they were found not guilty of the endangering lives part of the charge.

What they do agree on is that the drivers were fined Dh1,000 each (that's US$272/€212/£178).

GN says the 25 year old is a sergeant, The National says he's a policeman.

So one of the drivers is a sergeant in the police force.

I wonder if he's in the Traffic Police division...


As The National points out, the incident coincided with a Dubai Police announcement that they intended to lower the statistical traffic death rate to zero per 100,000 people by 2020. A task force to tackle aggressive driving was created as part of the initiative.


The stories are here: Gulf News The National.

Sale extended to traffic fines

It's Sale Time in the UAE, which seems to have been extended to the Abu Dhabi Traffic Police shop.

Not a 'part sale' either. Or an 'up to' sale.

It's an across the board 50% discount on all traffic fines.

It's an unlimited time offer too.


Hang on though. As usual, I'm totally confused, I don't understand any of it.

I'll show you why with a few bits from the Gulf News stories:

The reprieve comes after the amended traffic law, which stipulates hefty fines for traffic offences, left many motorists heavily indebted to the government, a senior traffic official disclosed.

Ummmm...motorists ignored the laws ( we see them all the time don't we) and were punished with fines. 'Many' of them are obviously serial law breakers because they racked up enough fines to be 'heavily indebted to the government'.

So the way to deal with that is to...cut the fines in half.

Right.


Engineer Ahmad Hussain Al Harthy, Director of the traffic department said:
"Certain types of serious traffic offences will be exempted from the discounts too".

The discount on fines is applicable to all traffic fines issued in Abu Dhabi, regardless of where the vehicle is registered.

Ummm...some offences will be exempted from the discounts but the discount is applicable to all fines.

Right.


The discount is applicable to offences accumulated over years as well as fresh ones.

Ummm...you don't need to pay any fines you accumulate 'over the years' because no-one follows up to collect payment. You pay when you re-register your vehicle, so the obvious thing to do is to drive an unregistered vehicle.

You save even more money because that means the vehicle doesn't need a safety check. No need to insure it either.

Right.


"The total number of traffic violations recorded and the fines accumulated by some individuals are simply unbelievable".

Ummm...the Traffic Police find it unbelievable.

Right.


We have some nice comments from offenders too.

"This is a great move. In the current economic situation, the government's decision is a very humanitarian one," said Naseem Faydulla, an engineer.

"I had Dh5,000 in fines collected over few years and did not know what to do. I just kept putting off the renewal of my car but now it's done."

Ummm...you didn't know what to do. Here's a radical thought - you could have paid the fines as you got them. Or better still, you could have paid the first fine, learnt a lesson from it and not re-offended.

You could have obeyed the law and re-registered your car, maybe you could also have given some thought to having it safety checked and insuring it too.

(Thought: Where do I get these outlandish ideas from?).


Yajuan Chen, who works for a furniture shop said that their company car had Dh7,250 worth fines slapped over two years. "No one wanted to take the responsibility so the renewal was delayed," she said, after paying half the amount and clearing off the fines.

We simply didn't bother to register the company car. And we got away with it.

Right.


There was a report not so long ago about the fines situation from the Dubai Police too.

Dubai police revealed in April that they have Dh100 million in penalties to be recovered from drivers. The highest amount owed to Dubai police is from a company that had Dh305,200 worth of fines. The highest amount owed by an individual is Dh186,900, owed by an Arab expatriate woman who no longer lives in the UAE.


I suppose it's too much to suggest that the entire system needs a serious rethink. And that includes the whole way the roads and traffic are policed.

We have 'unbelievable numbers' of serial traffic law breakers simply ignoring the fines they deservedly get, then driving their vehicles unregistered, which means no vehicle safety checks and no insurance.

Not to worry though, Abu Dhabi Traffic Police are on the case now, bringing down the heavy hand of the law:

...several traffic policemen were deployed to advise drivers to abide by traffic laws and not to repeat offences. Water and juice was distributed as a gesture of goodwill...


Right.




I've quoted from Gulf News reports, here and here

Tourists and medication

Dubai's authorities have scored many own goals over the past five or six years, actions which have helped to create the climate for what's been called 'Dubai bashing'.

Some of it has been nothing more than Dubai bashing. Often, exposure of serious shortcomings has been mixed up with untrue and hugely exaggerated stories and rumours. Some have simply been absolute rubbish, presenting rumours and dinner party gossip as facts.

But some have been true and fully justified, many of them caused by inexplicable laws or the way the laws have been administered.

One in that category has been the detention of people for carrying medication prescribed by their doctor.

There haven't been reports of this happening for a while, perhaps explained by a piece in Gulf News:

"Passengers who fail to present prescriptions for certain listed medications will not be detained at Dubai International Airport, Dubai Police said.

Dubai Police Deputy Chief Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina said: "There are no detention cells for passengers carrying listed medications by the Health Ministry without prescriptions.

"We keep the medications with us until the person presents a prescription from the doctor who prescribed it."

I assume that, realising the damage to Dubai's reputation that was being done by over-zealous interpretation, someone on high has had words with the officials involved.

It's a move in the right direction but it needs to go further of course.

Dubai aggressively promotes tourism in many countries, as does Emirates Airline, but there's no information to help potential visitors stay within the laws.

So many of us have said it so many times - information needs to be given to travellers before they begin their journey.

It's not hard to give a list of banned medication, such as codeine. And to list medication which requires a prescription from the prescribing doctor, to advise travellers to keep all medication in its original packaging.

Simple, and it would avoid all the problems.

From the police statement it seems any listed medications are confiscated, which is far from good for the patient who relies on it.

And if they're only here for a few days, I wonder whether they're allowed to leave the country before the original prescription arrives.


The Gulf News report is here.

Another ridiculous sentence

Soup up the engines of your 4x4s, race each other at 130kph in a 60kph residential area, kill an innocent driver unlucky enough to be on the same street.

That's what two drivers did in Al Khawaneej.

They deserve the full weight of the law.

What did they get? Three months jail and licences suspended for one year.

There was also the usual diyya of Dh200,000 but that's the same as an insurance payout and it's hardly a punishment for acting with such utter disregard for other people's lives.

Why such a risible sentence?

Because they're students and judgement was 'in consideration of their young age and their studies' apparently.

One is 18, the other 19. They're old enough to drive, old enough to have licences, old enough to have 4X4s, old enough to kill someone through their criminal actions...but not old enough to be held truly accountable.

There needs to be some serious thought given to a justice system that gives one month for kissing and three months for killing.

Prosecution has fifteen days to appeal the sentence. I sincerely hope they do.


Khaleej Times has the story here.

Kissing Brits sequal

There's a sequal to the kissing Brits case reported in Gulf News today - and yet again I'm at a loss to understand the way the legal system is adminstered here.

Having failed in her bid to have the original verdict overturned,
which I posted about here, Charlotte Adams said she wouldn't appeal further, she'd do the one month jail time because she was stuck here with no money and just wanted to put it all behind her as quickly as possible.

That was was nearly three weeks ago. Yet a source in the Criminal Rulings' Execution Section told Gulf News: "The 25-year-old convict decided to turn herself in more than 10 days ago… "

Does that mean someone given a jail term can decide when to start it?

The source went on: "...since then she produced herself to the Public Prosecution but was asked to wait for 10 days due to administrative procedures, which delayed the process of executing the verdict."

Uh?

You're given a jail sentence, your passport has already been confiscated so you can't go anywhere...and you can't even begin your jail sentence because of some weird bureaucracy.

Had she gone to jail as soon as the appeal was rejected Charlotte would now be well into her sentence and only about a week away from being able to go home.

Today's Gulf News report is here.

What is the matter with people?

A Belgian woman and a German woman had a very serious set-to in a car park.

Really serious.

Enough to call the cops.

How serious?

I'll tell you.

One accused the other of driving slowly and inattentively in a mall car park and almost running into her.

Worse. She says the driver...wait for it...squirted her strawberry juice at her.

So she called the cops.

The alleged squirter says that her juice 'mistakenly and unintentionally slipped from her hand and fell on' the squirtee.

Now they're both in court charged with mutual assault and exchanging curses.

No, they're not ten year olds, one is 38 the other 41.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Have a spat, have a rant to get it out of your system - but don't call the cops.

In their own countries they'd probably be charged with wasting police time.

What do you reckon, that deportation would be appropriate so that we have two less people with this kind of attitude amongst us?



Gulf News has the story here.