This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A man with joint British and Australian citizenship could spend a year in jail in Dubai after posting a link on his Facebook page to a US charity raising funds for blankets and socks for refugee children in Afghanistan.

Scott Richards, an economic development adviser from Adelaide, was arrested on 28 July and held for 22 days at Al Muraqqabat police station before being charged on Friday under a new law banning “fundraising without permission”.

The post he shared was a link to a campaign by the Zwan Family Charity to raise funds for new tarpaulins, blankets, warm clothes and socks and sleeping bags for children at the Charahi Qambar refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul. More than 100 children froze to death at the camp four years ago.

Richards, who grew up in Australia, was living with his wife and two sons in Dubai when he fell foul of a strict new law prohibiting the operation of any charity not registered in the United Arab Emirates.

The 42-year-old could now be sentenced to a prison term of between two months and one year, and a fine of up to 100,000 dirhams (£20,000).

The law, which was created last year, prohibits donations or advertising fundraising campaigns without prior written approval from the Islamic affairs and charitable activities department in Dubai.

Richards’s mother, Penelope Haberfield, told the BBC that her son had only been able to change his clothes once every seven days while detained and had to pay for water.



“His wife is under extreme stress,” she said. “She can only take the clothes to him once a week. She takes him money so that he can buy water and extra food.

“She’s worried for him, she’s worried for herself because if she runs out of money, will she have to leave the country? She’s frightened for her children.”

Radha Stirling from the group Detained in Dubai told the Australian broadcaster ABC: “There are constantly expats falling foul of the law [in the United Arab Emirates] and also being victims of other people because it’s so easy in the UAE for an individual to take out a police complaint against someone.

“There are so many laws, it’s so different, yet so many expats, but UAE doesn’t make any effort to inform expats.

“In a case like this where it’s so obviously unjust we are hoping for diplomatic intervention which the Australian government has done in the past.”.

• This article was amended on 22 August 2016. The name of the refugee camp in Kabul is Charahi Qambar, not Chahari Qambar as an earlier version said.

