British law student jailed for life in Dubai for possession of 50 grams of cocaine

Reports continue in Britain about the law student sentenced to life in Dubai’s harshest prison for “a foolish mistake,” according to her mother, who revealed that her daughter was arrested after 50 grams of cocaine were found in her possession.

Mia O’Brien, 23, from Huyton, Merseyside, was sentenced to life in prison and a £100,000 fine for possession of the narcotic, which is worth about £2,500 on the UK market.

Mia, a law student at the University of Liverpool, was arrested last October at her residence in Dubai, where a large quantity of cocaine was found. Two other people—her friend and her friend’s partner—were also arrested, and all were charged with drug trafficking.

Mia’s trial was completed in just one day on July 25, with the Emirati judicial authorities sentencing her to life imprisonment, of which she will serve at least 25 years, despite her claim in her testimony that she had no intention of trafficking drugs. The trial was conducted in Arabic, and Mia was informed of her sentence through her lawyer.

Her mother, Danielle McKenna, 46, said her daughter is living a “hell on Earth.” Mia is at Dubai Central Prison, also known as Al-Awir, where she shares a cell with six other women and is forced to sleep on the floor with just a mattress and a pillow.

“The conditions are terrible. There is no staff, and she has to bang on the door if she needs anything,” Danielle said. The student has witnessed fights and says she is very afraid for her life, while her mother revealed that Mia was crying on the phone, saying, “Mom, please, forgive me.”

Danielle stressed that her daughter had never taken drugs and would never think of selling cocaine. She believes Mia made a tragic mistake without any real intention of drug trafficking.

The family now hopes for an appeal and a possible transfer of Mia to the United Kingdom to serve her sentence closer to home. The student desperately wants to return to her two younger siblings, ages five and seven, and her mother stressed that “she just wants to come home.”

Mia’s story became known through the family’s GoFundMe campaign to raise money to visit her. However, the page was suddenly removed for violating the platform’s terms of service, as fundraising for the legal defense of certain crimes is not permitted. The campaign had a goal of £1,600 and had raised almost £700 before it was taken down.

The Prison of Terror
The prison houses male and female inmates, who are separated as soon as they pass through the gates. According to the UK government’s website, women are housed in one of the four wings of the massive correctional facility.

“Horror stories” from former inmates and relatives of Britons who remain imprisoned paint a chilling picture of Al-Awir. In 2012, Karl Williams was imprisoned for a year after police found drugs in the trunk of his rental car. During his imprisonment, he described Al-Awir as the “Alcatraz of Dubai.”

In his memoirs, he states that he saw fellow inmates being stabbed to death in violent clashes without any intervention from the guards. In a statement, he said he was tortured by police during his interrogation. “They pulled down my pants, spread my legs, and started electrocuting my testicles,” he wrote. “It was incredibly painful. I was terrified. I began to think I was going to die in that room.”

Lawyers for inmates have also stated that their clients were forced to sign documents in Arabic at gunpoint. Karl also claimed that Russian criminals were in charge of the prison and used HIV carriers to rape and infect other inmates as a form of punishment. A report earlier this year spoke of “daily incidents” of sexual abuse and rape in the prisons.

At least four HIV-positive inmates at Al-Awir were allegedly denied medication for up to five months, according to another shocking Human Rights Watch report. British footballer Billy Hood made similar allegations, saying that inmates were tortured and left without medication to die from diseases.

In 2021, 60-year-old Albert Douglas reiterated the same allegations, stating that inmates were being raped, tortured, and starved. He spoke of 20-year-old inmates being hung upside down and beaten “for fun,” and said he saw an elderly man who was emaciated after weeks of starvation. He also claimed that guards burned the genitals of an inmate who slept in the same cell.

Other testimonies from inmates, according to The Sun, state that there were periods when they had no water and were forced to drink from a communal toilet. The Dubai correctional system and the government deny all these allegations.