Thread: British man faces death penalty in UAE for 20g of cannabis

^
Sounds like daddy didn't love him...

Does he love him now?

Originally Posted by blue

having great ideas but always been too spaced out to implement them .

MJ doesn't make you have good ideas... if anything it stifles them. It makes people think shit ideas are good, and giggle a lot; but the ideas as well as the work come from the person and their environment when they're straight.
Maybe it opens people up to alternative ways of thinking, but I'm not so sure if that's from the culture around it than the actual substance.

Originally Posted by rawlins

Briton, 23, on death row in Abu Dhabi after being caught selling less than one ounce of cannabis is revealed to be businessman's son | Mail Online

• Nathaniel Lees - known as Nathan - is currently in Abu Dhabi Central Prison, an hour from the city centre
• His identity had been kept secret under local laws
• Judge claimed that Lees was a hardened drug dealer who was also selling opium and heroin
• Dozen people received capital sentences for drugs offences since 2007, but none have been executed

He is the son of British businessman Martin Lees, who is the director of GTS Training Solutions, a British company registered in the Isle of Man and based in Abu Dhabi.

The judge in his case claimed that Lees was an experienced drug dealer who was also selling opium and heroin, but it appears that no evidence of this appears to have been produced in court.

After the verdict in Abu Dhabi’s Criminal Court earlier this month Lees's mother Abeba Gebebramlak, who is of Eritrean origin, collapsed outside court.

Born in Jeddah, where his father worked for the Saudi Yanbu Petrochemical Company, Lees has lived most of his life in the United Arab Emirates.

While Lees's case file describes him as an 'electrician', he seems to have had no regular job and no education beyond secondary school.

Asked on the social networking website MySpace whether he wanted to go to college, he replied: 'LOL [laugh out loud]. Just ask if I want to goto [sic] a 4 year party instead.'

Lees' cases file shows he has previously had contact with the local police and showed a prior charge of possessing drugs.

On his MySpace profile he wrote: 'In the past month, have you been on drugs?" he asks himself.
'If I had access to drugs, would I be on MySpace?' is his reply.

When he was questioned on his first thoughts when waking up, Lees wrote: 'F---, where did I put my pipe.'

It's worth adding the rest:

The conservative UAE has a history of cracking down on the many foreigners who live there for indecent or 'un-Islamic' behaviour.
Earlier this year, a British landscape architect has been fined after he asked colleagues in a meeting: 'When will we finish with the damn mosques?'

John Hall, 42, the former Millennium Dome site planner, works for the parks and recreation section of Abu Dhabi Municipality, and was appealing against a one-month prison sentence imposed by the Court of Misdemeanours.

Mr Hall’s lawyer persuaded the judge that the word damn could mean ‘strong criticism in an unofficial way’ and he was fined £840 instead.
In 2010, a British woman who made a rape complaint in Dubai was arrested for having illegal sex with her fiance.

The woman, a 23-year-old from London, said she was raped by a waiter in a luxury hotel after celebrating her engagement to her 44-year-old boyfriend, also from London.

But when she reported the alleged rape to police in the Middle Eastern state she and her boyfriend were arrested for having sex outside marriage and illegal drinking outside licensed premises.

Later that year, another British woman was arrested for wearing a bikini at a Dubai mall.

The woman, a holidaymaker, was charged with indecency in Dubai after walking through the world's largest shopping centre in a bikini.

The woman was buying clothes and gifts in the Dubai Mall, fully dressed but in a low-cut top, when she was accosted by an Arabic woman and criticised for wearing 'revealing clothing'.

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

What a fucking place... I imagine the arabs have lese majeste rules that would make other places blush