[420 Girl]

A man jailed in the United Arab Emirates after cannabis weighing less than a sugar grain was found on the sole of his shoe has spoken out. Andrew Brown, 43, from Smethwick, West Midlands was jailed for four years in December but was pardoned last week by the head of Dubai's prison system.

The Rastafarian was arrested at Dubai Airport in September as he waited for a UK flight en route from Ethiopia. He said the court's decision to jail him had been "ridiculous". The father-of-two said he had stopped off in Dubai after attending the Rastafarian millennium celebrations in Ethiopia. "I was put into the detention centre, which was a dirty, smelly, horrible place, and I was kept there and ultimately they convicted me," he said.

Mr Brown, who is a youth development officer, said the authorities found 0.003g of cannabis on his shoe, an amount invisible to the naked eye. Dubai, in the United Arab Emirate (UAE), has a zero-tolerance drugs policy, but Mr Brown expressed disbelief at the decision to jail him.

"Am I responsible for the ground beneath my feet?" he asked. "Who looks at the soles of their shoes?"

Last month Mr Brown's brother Lee claimed he had been arrested because he was a Rastafarian.

The list of banned substances in the UAE includes many products which are available over-the-counter and off-the-shelf in the UK. These include medications such as codeine, a common ingredient in pain relief and cold-and-flu medication, and the common baking ingredient, poppy seeds. A comprehensive list of banned pharmaceuticals is available at the Fair Trials Abroad website.

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