Petition:

My name is Farzan Athari and I am a 29-year-old Swedish-Iranian. I am writing this from Dubai Central Jail. After being here for 8 months, they finally gave me my sentence; they gave me LIFE in Jail. I later learned that I almost got the death penalty, but because the decision was not unanimous I was given the more ‘lenient’ sentence. I can’t even describe the feeling of getting told, over the phone, that I’m going to spend the rest of my life in jail. I’m still hoping to wake up from this nightmare…

Most of what has been out in the media up until this point is NOT TRUE. I was arrested outside my home, Burj Khalifa in Dubai on May 14th 2013, with drugs in my pocket. Armani Hotel is located in my building, so when the police stated that I was “standing outside a luxurious hotel looking for customers to sell drugs to”, I was actually just walking out of my residency to meet my friend. What I want you to know is that the drugs weren’t even mine, I was not using, promoting or selling it and I had no intention to do so either. I got entrapped. For those who don’t know what entrapment means; Entrapment: the action of luring an individual into committing a crime in order to prosecute the person for it. Since I’m in the middle of my appeal process, my lawyer advised me not to go into further details but as soon as the appeal is over you will understand how I even got into this situation...

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