A Nigerian tourist has been jailed by United Arab Emirates, UAE, over a social media post where she shared a video of herself and other Nigerians detained at Dubai International Airport.
The Nigerian, identified by her Twitter handle @dunchichi, was sentenced to one-year imprisonment for alleged cybercrime.
Another Twitter user @jerrydoubles confirmed this in a Twitter thread on Saturday.
The woman had raised alarm about her detention along with about 20 other Nigerians on August 31, 2022.
She tweeted: “I’m at Dubai international airport and myself and some tiger Nigerians with valid Visas are being held in a room hours after arriving with no explain and no information on what we can do. Please help me. There’s more than 20 of us.”
In another tweet, the Nigerian advised the public not to visit Dubai, UAE, noting that visitors were treated poorly.
“My sister had to go through immigration to get me released. It was a tedious process. Others are still there and I don’t know their status. What happens if you have no family here? Nobody knows what is going on,” she added, with a video.
On September 2, 2022, she tweeted: “When I was about to be released after being held for over 8 hours, I was searched and scanned through a special body and luggage scanner, and my belongings were opened and searched one by one like I had drugs or I had a weapon in my possession, even though I went on the trip with my sister on a family visa.
“No apology was issued instead to me or the others in the same situation.”
A Twitter user @jerrydoubles, who claimed to be her relative, tweeted that she was sentenced by UAE authorities on October 12.
“Her sentence came from the backdrop that she got a family visa to travel. But in fact, she was there with her sister.
“It got messy & complicated, she was released on arrival after being detained for several hours, only to be sentenced when she was returning to Nigeria.
“They are capitalising on the fact that she made a video then posted them on her Twitter timeline to narrate the ordeal. They said it’s cybercrime in their country. She went ahead to delete it. Still, that didn’t soften them. Now she is jailed #justicefordinci,” the tweep wrote.
Earlier this year, UAE stopped issuing visas to persons, including Nigerians under 30, but placed priority on family visits.
