Australian jailed and deported from UAE
July 15, 2015
An Australian artist was deported from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday evening after being arrested, jailed, and fined for a Facebook post.
"After 53 hours in custody, having been shackled at the ankles, strip-searched, blood tested, forced to sleep on a concrete floor without a mattress or pillow and having no access to toilet paper or eating utensils, I can happily say I AM SAFE & OUT OF JAIL AND ABU DHABI!" the 39-year-old Jodi Magi wrote on her blog.
According to Magi's website, she moved to Abu Dhabi in 2012, where she worked as a painter and illustrator as well as teaching art to local women. Her legal troubles stem back to a February social media post where she uploaded a picture of an illegally parked car, blocking two spaces for drivers with disabilities, in front of her apartment building.
"Obviously, I think a 3,600 Australian dollar (2,442 euros, US $2,690) fine and deportation with a complimentary incarceration period was an extreme reaction to a jpg of a car posted to a closed Facebook page, when I did not swear or mention a single name and blocked the registration plate," Magi wrote.
She added that while she was "pretty traumatized" what she had experienced was nothing next to the other women she met in jail "whose only crime was being poor, marrying the wrong guy, getting pregnant outside of marriage or/and being victims of rampant and systemic police corruption where ‘evidence,' ‘ethics' and ‘due process' are unheard of concepts."
A source from within the Emirati judicial system told French news agency AFP that Magi went before the court after the owner of the car, a European, complained about the post. She was also charged with writing "insulting, degrading remarks" next to the picture, something Magi denied both in court and on her blog.
Magi said she believed the only reason she was freed so quickly was because of her nationality, that her case had garnered too much media attention for the local courts' comfort, and that the Australian embassy took an active role in helping secure her release.
The artist wrote that she was going to "decompress" in Laos after her deportation.