New York Student Jailed For One Year In Dubai For Insulting A Guard

A college student from New York has been sentenced to one-year imprisonment by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for assaulting and insulting a woman security guard during a flight layover at Dubai airport.

As per a report, Elizabeth Polanco De Los Santos, a student at Lehman College in the Bronx, was sentenced on October 2 after spending almost three months in Dubai after a travel ban was imposed on her.

US Student Jailed For Insulting A Guard

Santos was supposed to take a transit flight from Dubai Airport after a 10-hour layover on her way from Istanbul to New York. However, she allegedly faced degrading and invasive searches by airport staff, turning her travel into a nightmare.

Radha Stirling, a human rights activist who is helping Santos, told Insider, “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 lawyer costs.”

On July 14, Santos and a friend were returning home to New York after spending a vacation in Istanbul. Originally, they had planned to rest in Paris; however, they decided to take a connecting flight to have the opportunity to explore Dubai during a ten-hour layover.

The problem began when Dubai airport personnel requested that Santos remove a waist compressor, which she was required to wear post-surgery. She was taken to a private area where female staff members removed the compressor.

However, Santos’s mother claimed that the airport personnel had handled her roughly, inflicting pain on her daughter’s still-healing surgical scars. She also added that they mocked her and declined help when she requested assistance to put on the complicated garment.

Santos said that she felt violated, uncomfortable, and afraid. She explained that “the compressor had many pins, and you needed to stretch the edges and clip small, skinny pins together close to the body." She continued to ask for help, and when the staff declined, she claimed to have gently nudged one female staff’s arm to guide her out of the way and call out to her friend for help.

Following this incident, Santos was detained for several hours in a room as the airport security guard had filed a complaint against her. She was not allowed to leave until she signed a document that was written in Arabic.

After she returned to the airport to catch her flight to New York, she was informed about the travel ban imposed on her and was forced to remain in the country until the charges were addressed in court.

After several weeks of staying in the hotel, a judge permitted her to depart the country after paying 10,000 AED (USD 2,700). However, she has now been sentenced to one year in prison by a Dubai court.

In a statement to Newsweek on October 1, the US State Department said that they were aware that a US citizen was detained in Dubai. Advocacy groups, concerned citizens, and legal representatives are rallying in support of her cause, urging the US State Department to revise the travel warnings regarding the risk of false allegations and extortion scams in Dubai.

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