A British woman has been detained in Dubai for allegedly insulting her ex-husband’s wife in Facebook comments made almost three years ago, the BBC reports.
Laleh Shahravesh, 55, is facing up to two years in jail and a fine of more than $65,000 under the United Arab Emirates’ draconian online defamation laws, even though she only lived in Dubai for 8 months and was no longer living there when she purportedly wrote the comments.
She was arrested when she and her 14-year-old daughter visited Dubai to attend the funeral of her ex-husband, the BBC says.
According to campaign group Detained in Dubai, authorities acted after the new wife complained about the comments made on Facebook in 2016. Shahravesh had apparently posted that her ex-husband, to whom she had been married to for 18 years, would “go under the ground” and that his new wife was a “horse.”
Shahravesh made the Facebook posts while living in the U.K.
Radha Stirling, the CEO of Detained In Dubai, told the BBC that Shahravesh was “absolutely distraught” and that her daughter was going through “what you would call hell.”
Shahravesh is due in court on Apr. 11, according to the campaign group. Foreign Office officials in the U.K. have told the BBC that they are in touch with authorities in Dubai over her case.
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