A British single mother is facing up to two years in a Dubai jail and fines of £50,000 for Facebook posts made while living in the United Kingdom, calling her ex-husband's new wife a "horse".
According to human rights group Detained in Dubai, Laleh Shahravesh, 55, was arrested on March 10 after travelling to Dubai with her 14-year-old daughter to attend the funeral of her ex-husband.
Ms Shahravesh had previously lived in Dubai for eight months with her Portuguese husband.
After returning to the UK with her daughter, she was surprised to receive divorce papers in the mail.
Shortly after, in 2016, according to Detained in Dubai, she opened Facebook to see he had remarried and she, upset, left two Facebook comments in Farsi.
The comments said: "I hope you go under the ground you idiot. Damn you. You left me for this horse" and "You married a horse you idiot".
Laleh Shahravesh was arrested in March when she travelled to Dubai for her ex-husband's funeral. Source: EPA
"We flew to Dubai where we were intending to stay for just five days and were arrested immediately upon entry because Pedro’s [her ex-husband] new wife Samah had reported my old Facebook post to the police," Ms Shahravesh said in a statement published by Detained in Dubai.
The police kept telling me to call someone to take my daughter while I went to Jebel Ali [prison], but I don’t know anyone here well enough for that. Eventually, they let us go, but kept my passport."
In the same statement, Ms Shahravesh said she is unable to leave Dubai and claims she is unable to defend herself in court.
The United Arab Emirates is home to strict cyber-crime laws where a person can be punished for making defamatory statements on social media.
Forced to stay in a hotel indefinitely, Ms Shahravesh said she has no money left and has lost her job at a homeless shelter.
In a letter released on Monday, Ms Shahravesh's daughter Paris pleaded with Dubai's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to release her mother.
"I have not seen my mother in 23 days, and with every passing day, I feel less hopeful of her return," she wrote.
"I ask kindly: please, please return my mother’s passport, and let her come home."
The teenager said she was forced to leave Dubai without her mother and without being able to attend her father's funeral.
CEO of Detained in Dubai Radha Stirling said she had warned the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office that the current advice on travelling to Dubai is "insufficient" and "completely irresponsible".
"When the UAE introduced Cybercrime laws, it rendered almost every visitor to the country a criminal," she said in a statement.
"Visitors to Dubai are rightfully unaware that they could be jailed for a Facebook or Twitter post made from outside the jurisdiction of the UAE, and made years ago. The UAE’s cybercrime laws apply extraterritorially and retroactively."
The Foreign Office said it was providing support to the family, the BBC has reported.
In 2018, an Australian man was reportedly tortured and forced to sign a false confession after being arrested in the UAE on suspicion of espionage. In December last year, Aziz Abbas was reportedly sentenced to five years in prison.
