A 21-year-old New York college student has been freed after first going viral following being sentenced to a year in a Dubai prison for “gently” touching an airport security guard’s arm.
According to an advocacy group called Detained in Dubai (which provides legal assistance to foreigners in the United Arab Emirates), Elizabeth Polanco De Los Santos, the New York college student who was sentenced to a year in a Dubai prison with charges of “assaulting and insulting” an airport staff member, has had her one-year sentence commuted.
It is reported that in July, Polanco De Los Santos was traveling home from Istanbul to New York with a friend, and had a 10-hour layover at Dubai International Airport. While there, she was accused of “assaulting and insulting” an airport staff member.
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Per Detained in Dubai CEO Radha Stirling, “Elizabeth was falsely accused of assaulting and insulting a customs official when she was stripped and humiliated upon entering the desert city during a transit stop.”
Stirling and her team previously reported that after Polanco De Los Santos was asked to remove a medical waist-training brace by female security officers at the airport, the officers refused to help her put it back on. She then tried to call her friend for help, but one of the airport staff members was said to be standing in her way.
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Subsequently, Polanco De Los Santos said she “gently touched her arm to guide her out of the way then desperately started crying to [her] friend for help.” Following the incident, the New York college student was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison.
Soon enough, news got out about Polanco De Los Santos’ case, and eventually Detained in Dubai reps stepped in and helped to get her sentence commuted. Stirling said, “The news that her sentence would be commuted was a welcome end to Elizabeth’s hellish 5 months in Dubai that left her humiliated, traumatized, and out of pocket $50,000.”
Stirling added that her organization was “thankful” for the New York college student’s release, but questioned, “Is that really a happy ending? She has been left with the scars of an incomprehensibly traumatic experience for a young student, she has lost $50,000 that she will never be compensated for. Furthermore, she’s been convicted on the basis of mere allegations, sentenced to a year’s prison, fined and deported. That in itself is a disgrace.”
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On Tuesday evening (October 3), Polanco De Los Santos boarded a plane back home to New York from Dubai. Stirling confirmed that she is now back in the U.S., and told her “landed was like a dream.”
Furthermore, Stirling said that the reason Polanco De Los Santos was ultimately released is still unclear; however, she says it came after tons of pressure from the media, the U.S. Embassy, and Congressman Ritchie Torres of New York.
Stirling believes that sentencing the New York college student was a “bad PR marketing” move for the United Arab Emirates, which essentially caved to international pressure. Stirling added, “In high-profile cases like this, they just want to quickly close the case as soon as possible.”
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