{"id":257380,"date":"2018-01-10T19:20:16","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T00:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=257380"},"modified":"2021-04-15T19:28:51","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T23:28:51","slug":"british-man-jailed-in-dubai-for-whatsapp-message-about-dodgy-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/british-man-jailed-in-dubai-for-whatsapp-message-about-dodgy-car\/","title":{"rendered":"British man jailed in Dubai for WhatsApp message about dodgy car"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #008080;\"><strong>RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008080;\"><strong>Boycott Dubai!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>A British real estate agent has been jailed for sending a WhatsApp message to a dodgy car salesman after he was swindled out of \u00a36000. He asked the car dealer \u201chow do you sleep at night?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kingston man Yaseen Killick, 29, spent \u00a36000 on a second-hand Volkswagen Golf \u2013 only for the vehicle to break down hours later. Killick then discovered the car had previously been written off, so he sent the dodgy dealer an angry message on WhatsApp.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you sleep at night knowing you\u2019re ripping people off?\u201d Killick wrote in the message. Killick also threatened to take the car salesman to court over the dodgy deal and said that selling the car to him was \u201cmorally wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But that certainly wasn\u2019t the end of it. The car dealer complained to police over the threatening message, which resulted in Killick\u2019s arrest at Dubai airport where he and his wife were trying to board a flight back to the UK to spend Christmas with relatives.<\/p>\n<p>He spent three weeks in prison over Christmas, was fined \u00a31000 and given \u201cbeans, pumpkins and lentils\u201d on Christmas Day. To make matters worse, when he was released from prison he was booted out of the country.<\/p>\n<p>He also slammed the British Embassy, calling the diplomatic service \u201cuseless.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Killick\u2019s partner Robyn, 31, said the ordeal had been a nightmare: \u201cWe have lost our home and our jobs and it\u2019s been horrible all over this guy ripping us off and we are so badly out of pocket,\u201d she said. \u201cWe went there to try as a last adventure before coming back to England and getting married and starting a family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Killick told the Sun that \u201cIt was a nightmare. The prison conditions were horrific. I was treated appallingly \u2013 all for sending a WhatsApp message.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Radha Stirling of Detained in Dubai, a not-for-profit organisation devoted to helping those who have become victims of injustice in the United Arab Emirates, told media: \u201cThe United Arab Emirates has some of the strictest cyber-crime laws in the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany people have fallen foul of them \u2013 even if they are outside of Dubai,\u201d she said. \u201cAnyone who sends a message to someone in Dubai on electronic media that is critical or a complaint can find themselves subject to a police investigation and if convicted they can be fined or even imprisoned.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Killick is certainly not alone in his unfair treatment in the UAE \u2013 in the last six months at least four other Britons have been detained in Dubai for the most trivial infractions.<\/p>\n<p>In September a man was detained for flipping the bird to another driver, in October a man was jailed for accidentally touching another man\u2019s hip in a bar, in November a British woman was jailed for witnessing a punch up, and another man was imprisoned for having smoked weed \u2013 before he had even arrived in Dubai.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/415440-dubai-jailed-british-man\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/415440-dubai-jailed-british-man\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RAEL\u2019S COMMENT: Boycott Dubai! &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":327479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}