A BRIT tourist has been jailed in Dubai after a row with airline staff over a wheelchair for his mum.
The traveller was slapped with a £2k fine after using “very bad language” toward an employee earlier this year.
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The tourist had gone back to court to appeal the hefty penalty but on November 6.
But then he was handed a three-month prison sentence instead.
The Dubai Court of Appeal heard how he had insulted a member of airline staff after being told they could not immediately bring him a wheelchair to ferry his mother to a shuttlebus last February.
“I saw the traveller repeatedly asking an airport desk employee about the wheelchair and expected that he might have not understood her explanation,” the airport employee said in court.
“When I tried to explain it to him, he insulted me using very bad language.”
In her testimony, an airport desk employee told judges that she was on duty in the transit area of Terminal 2 on the day of the incident.
“The British passenger approached me with inquiries about their flight schedule and to verify their boarding passes,” she said.
She told him that their flight was departing from Terminal 3 and they would need to take a shuttle bus to get there.
During the interaction, the holidaymaker requested a wheelchair for his mother.
“I informed him a wheelchair would be made available before boarding the bus.”
The traveller left and then returned to the desk saying there was another passenger near the shuttle bus who had a wheelchair.
But when the employee tried to clarify the airline’s policy on wheelchair services, he snapped.
“I told the traveller that using such offensive language is not allowed at Dubai airport but he responded that he didn’t care,” said the airport worker.
The staff then called the police and a case was later filed against the tourist, who was fined by Dubai’s Criminal Court.
Following his appeal, a three-month jail sentence was imposed instead of the fine, to be followed by deportation.
Dubai enforces strict penalties for a number of crimes that have landed tourists in trouble over the years.
Swearing in public is illegal in Dubai and the UK government has warned holidaymakers: “Swearing and making rude gestures (including online) are considered obscene acts and offenders can be jailed or deported.
“Take particular care when dealing with the police and other officials.”
It comes after a Brit tourist was arrested for public indecency in Dubai after touching a man’s hip.
Campaigners claimed the man who reported the 2017 incident did it so he could brag to pals.
Radha Stirling, from the campaign group Detained in Dubai which backed Jamie Harron in his case, said his accuser “was trying to show off his power in front of his friends”.
He spent three months fighting charges and was left jobless and penniless because of what he called a “cultural misunderstanding”.
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