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Brit expat jailed in UAE for social media comment now released
| Published: | 16 Jul at 6 PM |
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A British expat jailed in the UAE for sending an electronic insult has now been released and is in a desperate state of health.
Christian Wilke was accused of sending an ‘electronic insult’ via Facebook and was jailed as a result, but no-one seems to know why he was arrested in the first place and what Facebook post contained the alleged insult. After he’d spent nine full months behind bars, his mother Christine Wilke-Breitsameter managed to arrange for his freedom, announcing it on Facebook yesterday. Christian is a former head of computing at Downe House School in Berkshire, UK, and his mother is claiming he was kept in a filthy cell, had been forced into signing a false confession and still had no idea why he was arrested in the first place.
He was jailed in October 2017, with his release taking place after an intervention by British officials in the UAE, and had developed pneumonia during his incarceration. According to his mother, the confession he’d been forced to sign was in Arabic, which he neither speaks nor reads, and his family still have not received any documentation showing evidence which resulted in his arrest, conviction and one-year prison sentence. It seems that, since new cyber crime laws were enacted in 2012, dozens of people have suffered the same fate as Christian and are still being detained by the UAE authorities for their social media comments.
Meanwhile in Dubai, in spite of media rumours to the contrary, the emirate’s property market is projected to surge ahead in the run-up to 2020. A massive supply of new properties supply is expected as a result of the completion of a number of off-plan launches, but concern is being raised as to how to bring in enough demand to satisfy the new inventory of mostly upscale accommodation. Some 40,000 units are expected to come onto the market by the end of this year, with another 75,000 units expected by the end of 2019 and a further 350,000 due for completion by 2020.
Christian Wilke was accused of sending an ‘electronic insult’ via Facebook and was jailed as a result, but no-one seems to know why he was arrested in the first place and what Facebook post contained the alleged insult. After he’d spent nine full months behind bars, his mother Christine Wilke-Breitsameter managed to arrange for his freedom, announcing it on Facebook yesterday. Christian is a former head of computing at Downe House School in Berkshire, UK, and his mother is claiming he was kept in a filthy cell, had been forced into signing a false confession and still had no idea why he was arrested in the first place.
He was jailed in October 2017, with his release taking place after an intervention by British officials in the UAE, and had developed pneumonia during his incarceration. According to his mother, the confession he’d been forced to sign was in Arabic, which he neither speaks nor reads, and his family still have not received any documentation showing evidence which resulted in his arrest, conviction and one-year prison sentence. It seems that, since new cyber crime laws were enacted in 2012, dozens of people have suffered the same fate as Christian and are still being detained by the UAE authorities for their social media comments.
Meanwhile in Dubai, in spite of media rumours to the contrary, the emirate’s property market is projected to surge ahead in the run-up to 2020. A massive supply of new properties supply is expected as a result of the completion of a number of off-plan launches, but concern is being raised as to how to bring in enough demand to satisfy the new inventory of mostly upscale accommodation. Some 40,000 units are expected to come onto the market by the end of this year, with another 75,000 units expected by the end of 2019 and a further 350,000 due for completion by 2020.
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