Dealing severely with alcohol consumption isn’t one of them, though. Nobody would be shocked by a title like “mom arrested for having one line of cocain on British Airways”, for instance, and there’s no essential difference (I understand that in fact the story is distorted and she presumably wasn’t arrested for a glass of wine).
It’s obviously intended to have a chilling effect on other western governments, and unfortunately, it’s likely to work pretty well. Officials will become very reluctant to criticize Saudi Arabia human rights record. But anyway, we’ve all been best buddies with what is one of the worst regime on the planet, which is pretty much antithetic to all our supposedly important values, so just criticizing SA even less than we’re doing now isn’t going to change much.
Apparently the case against Ms. Holman has been dropped and she is free to return home. She stated that she received an apology on behalf of the government and they have even offered to pay for her plane ticket home. The publicity was clearly effective (assuming these reports are true).
Nevertheless, Dubai is on my list of places I would never choose to visit.
Someone, I think on SNL, pointed out that Saudi Arabia gave women the right to drive only shortly before cars will be given the right to drive themselves.
The Dubai government promotes tourism and the money it brings in.
But, they are mindful of the conservative religious elements. They can’t risk stirring them up. It doesn’t help when tourists openly get intoxicated or start getting frisky in public.
Arab Spring put the fear into that entire region. Egypt is still struggling to keep the conservative religious element under control and keep tourism.
I’m not sure what the full story is with this lady. One glass of wine on a plane shouldn’t have been a problem.
Every international border I’ve been to has signs about no phones and no photography or filming. Most of the time, they don’t care if you’re using the phone while in the queue at immigration, but you’d better put it away as you approach the immigration officer. It is up to her to make sure the visa is valid and the airline shouldn’t have let her board without a valid visa. I’d imagine it was actually the airline that had to pay for the return flight.
I’m sure the glass of wine wasn’t what caused the arrest. Although, if she pregamed heavily at the airport, then anyone should know it’s never a good idea to try to enter any foreign country while intoxicated.
Yes, how could the Obama administration put kids in jail (cages) back in 2014? I thought Obama would never do such a thing while President of a civilized country like the United States.
At the Detroit airport, you can’t even have your phone out while you’re waiting in line for immigration. There are ICE officers walking up and down the line, loudly repeating for everyone the rule against cell phones, and occasionally speaking directly to the inevitable oblivious passenger who is using his phone and telling him/her to put it away immediately.
Like Australia? I’ve been in court when people were convicted of that. The police only find a trace of marijuana if they search you, and they only search you if the want to find something to arrest you for.
I’ve suggested that the police should be given the power of arbitrary arrest, so that they didn’t have to make up reasons. The counter argument is that if the police were given the power of arbitrary arrest, they’d be arbitrarily arresting people all the time. I don’t have any evidence one way or the other.
According to an article she:
Is not a UK mom, she is a Swedish mom running a botox clinic in the UK
She “advertised botox injections along with other procedures while on visits to Dubai”, where she has no medical license to practise.
She “had tried to use her expired Swedish passport to enter the country, then used an Iranian passport without a visa.”
When airport security queried her lack of valid passport, she became violently belligerent.
The official charge she was held on is filming airport security. This is not allowed there. The real charge is: she was being a dick and considered herself above any and all laws in the country she was visiting.
