Grooverider jailed!

[N.O.R.F]

Drugs land DJ in prison

 

 

British DJ Grooverider has been jailed for four years, after being found guilty of bringing cannabis into Dubai. Grooverider, whose real name is Raymond Bingham, was sentenced yesterday at the Court of First Instance. He will be deported to the UK after serving his jail term.

The 40-year-old Londoner co-hosts popular weekly drum and bass show ‘Fabio and Grooverider’ which is broadcast on BBC Radio One and around the world via the internet. A BBC spokesman suggested Grooverider’s employment would not be terminated immediately - even though he has broken the law.

The spokesman told 7DAYS: “Grooverider made a serious mistake and he is paying a high price for this. The show will continue to be aired by Fabio and we will review the situation once Grooverider has completed his sentence. We do not discuss personal issues but clearly he cannot host the show while he is serving his sentence. Of course we do not condone what Grooverider has done.”

A spokeswoman for the DJ’s management company, Groove Connection, told 7DAYS that, ironically, her client is now more in demand than ever.

She said: “Grooverider will continue DJing. “He has already got bookings - people are dying to book him. He got the minimum sentence, which is pretty good, and I cannot see this affecting him on any level.”

Grooverider was arrested at Dubai airport on November 23 last year - with 2.16 grammes of cannabis in his pocket - just hours before he was due to play a sold-out show at The Lodge nightclub.

During his trial, Grooverider admitted having the drugs on him: “The drugs were in my possession - I forgot I had them in my trousers,” he said. A Dubai Customs official said in a statement read to the court: “I searched him and he had nothing illegal on him, but when I searched his bag I found marijuana in a plastic bag inside the pocket of his jeans. When I asked him about it he said it was marijuana and that it was for his personal use and he had forgotten it was in his trousers.”

Grooverider’s lawyer, Moh-ammad Al-Reda, who defended Grammy-winning R&B producer Dallas Austin when he was arrested in Dubai in 2006 with 1.26 grammes of cocaine, said last month that his client feels regret and knows he has made a mistake. Al-Reda would not say yesterday whether he would be appealing against the sentence. He has two weeks to do so. During that time Grooverider will remain in custody.

 

http://www.7days.ae/showstory.php?id=67425

Briton in the clear

 

A British youth worker who was jailed in Dubai for having a microscopic speck of cannabis on his shoe has been pardoned. Father-of-three Andrew Brown is now back home after his early release from a four-year prison term. Last September, immigration officials seized the 43-year-old at Dubai Airport as he waited for a connecting flight to the UK.

 

 

They searched his suitcases and found cannabis weighing 0.003g - less than a grain of sugar - on the sole of his shoe. The Rastafarian, from Birmingham, said: “I was returning from a holiday in Ethiopia to mark the Rastafarian millennium when everything went very wrong. “I was waiting in the lounge in Dubai for our connection back to England when an immigration official came up to me and asked to search me for drugs. I was stripped and searched.

“Then they started going through my luggage. One said they had found a tiny bit of cigarette paper on my shoes and that was it.” It is understood officials found cannabis on the paper. Brown added: “Before I knew it I’d been processed in a detention centre and sentenced to four years in prison. I had to face the fact I could be spending the next four years there, so I got my head down… but I felt utterly depressed. I felt completely hopeless.”

Brown thought his fate was sealed after the British Embassy said they could not help him, but last week he was pardoned and allowed to return home.

 

Brown said: “One moment I was going about my prison life as usual and the next I was on a plane back to Heathrow.” The mandatory sentence for anyone caught with drugs in Dubai is four years in jail.

http://www.7days.ae/en/2008/02/26/briton-in-the-clear.html