Brit student in Dubai jail facing 25 YEARS for ‘single line of cocaine’ after being ‘busted at party’, cell mate reveals
LAW student Mia O’Brien was sentenced to 25 years in a hellhole Dubai jail for taking just “a single line of cocaine”, we can reveal for the first time.
A British mum held alongside Mia, 24, told The Sun: “She said they were at a party and having fun and suddenly police turned up and put her in a car.
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“There was drugs at the party and she said to me ‘I took drugs’. Mia knew she was in big trouble but didn’t seem to think she would be treated as a dealer.
“She seemed to take the view that while she had taken coke, she wasn’t dealing drugs.
“That’s how she acted in the detention centre.
“If what she’s saying is true and all she has done is a line of cocaine, 25 years is a horrifically long sentence. She said she was visiting on holiday and had only been there a few days.”
Mia was arrested along with a female Brit pal and her pal’s boyfriend when cops found 50g of cocaine in the flat last October.
On July 25 she was found guilty and handed the 25-year term after a one-day trial held in Arabic.
She is now at Al Awir jail, after months in the notorious Al Barsha police detention centre.
Her ex-cellmate — detained for leaving the scene of a car accident and released after paying a £3,000 fine — said: “Mia had fallen out with her friend as she said it was the boyfriend who had the cocaine. Her problem was that they had all been arrested and Mia had it in her system.
“Her friend didn’t so she was released and is back in the UK. Mia thinks she must have stitched her up to get home.”
The mum added of Al Barsha: “There is no light and the toilets are vile. One area is full of people who know they have been caught doing something and are going to be jailed for a long time.”
Mia’s sentence and £100,000 fine only came to light this month when her mum Danielle McKenna, 46, of Huyton, Liverpool, launched a fundraiser to try to get the verdict overturned.
Mia’s friend, known only as Emma, tested negative for cocaine and was released without charge.
Her boyfriend got the same 25-year jail term as Mia.
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