British mother faces jail in Dubai for calling ex’s new wife ‘a horse’ on Facebook
A BRITISH mother is facing jail in Dubai after calling her ex-husband’s new wife a ‘horse’ in a Facebook post in 2016.
Laleh Sharavesh was arrested along with her 14-year-old daughter Paris when she landed in the United Arab Emirates to attend her former husband’s funeral last month.
The 55-year-old was told that his second wife had reported the social media post from 2016 to the police and she was detained under the country’s strict cybercrime laws.
While her daughter was allowed to return to their home in Richmond, southwest London, Miss Sharavesh was forced to hand over her passport and has been banned from leaving the country.
The single mother, who works for a homeless shelter, will appear in court this week and has been warned that she faces up to two years in prison and a £50,000 fine. She said: ‘I am terrified. I can’t sleep or eat. I have gone down two dress sizes because of the stress.
‘And my daughter cries herself to sleep every night. We are so close, especially since her father left us, and we only have each other. It breaks my heart to be kept apart from her.’
Their ordeal began on March 10 when she travelled to Dubai intending to stay for five days so Paris could attend the funeral of her father, Pedro.
Almost three years earlier the Portuguese banker, who died aged 51 from a heart attack, had left Miss Sharavesh after 18 years of marriage for a younger woman. Miss Sharavesh admits to lashing out on Facebook after learning that her husband had married his lover by seeing a picture of them together.
She said she wrote two comments – from the UK – in Farsi where she described 42-year- old Tunisianborn Samah al Hammadi as a ‘horse’ and called her ex an ‘idiot’.
more The mother about the said posts she thought and was no unaware Miss al Hammadi had complained to authorities in Dubai, where social media posts can be used in a prosecution. Miss Sharavesh said of the disparaging remarks: ‘I reacted badly. I lashed out and wrote two unpleasant
comments about his new wife on his Facebook page. I know shouldn’t have. I should have behaved better, but I felt angry, betrayed and hurt. ‘After 18 years of marriage, such a small amount of time apart, he was getting married so quickly. He didn’t even have enough respect for me to tell me in advance’. The offending posts were: ‘I hope you go under the ground, you idiot. Damn you. You left me for this horse’ and ‘You married a horse, you idiot.’
Miss Sharavesh said she has racked up more than £5,000 in debts and lost her job after being forced to stay in Dubai.
She said: ‘I have lost everything because of this.
‘I have no money left after paying to stay in a hotel here for over a month. My life is in ruins, and that is even before the huge fines and jail I am facing here.
‘All of that is less important than being separated from my daughter, and that’s all I want now, just to be back with her.’
Radha Stirling, the chief executive of human rights organisation Detained In Dubai, is officially representing Miss Sharavesh. She said: ‘I have spoken with Laleh and daughter Paris. Their experience is heart- breaking. Not only has Paris lost her father, but in going to visit him to say her final goodbye, she wound up in a frightening Middle Eastern police station, and is now without her mother.’
Miss Stirling added: ‘It is simply unreasonable that a country wishing to attract Western tourism arrests and charges a woman for a Facebook post made years ago from outside of the UAE’s jurisdiction.’
‘Unpleasant comments’