Title: Another American Woman Gets Her Feminist Wake Up Call in Dubai
Created On: October 4, 2023 at 11:04PM
From: Oshay Duke Jackson
A legal advocacy group says a 21-year-old New York college student was sentenced to a year in prison over claims of “assaulting and insulting” the airport staff in Dubai after she gently touched a security officer’s arm.
Detained in Dubai, an organization that provides legal assistance to foreigners in the United Arab Emirates, said in a press release that Elizabeth Polanco De Los Santos was transiting through Dubai International Airport from Istanbul to New York with a friend in July when she faced “degrading, painful, and humiliating searches.”
The pair had chosen a 10-hour layover in Dubai over Paris.
“Elizabeth only intended to transit through Dubai for six hours, but she’s been there for months on end and has lost $50,000 in expenses and lawyers costs,” Detained in Dubai’s founder, Radha Stirling, said in a statement.
“She’s now been told she has a one-year prison sentence but that if all ‘goes well,’ she will only be detained until she can book a flight out of the UAE,” Stirling added.
The UAE’s Ministry of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
An earlier statement from Detained in Dubai said that after Polanco De Los Santos removed a medical waist-training brace upon request from female security officers at the airport, the officers refused to help her put it back on — a process that usually takes two people — and blocked her exit.
At this point, she “gently touched” the arm of one of the security guards so they could get her friend to help, she said in the press release.