Pubdate: Tue, 19 Jun 2007
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Steven Edwards, CanWest News Service

CANADIAN FOUND GUILTY IN DUBAI

Vancouver Drug Worker Sentenced To Four Years

UNITED NATIONS -- A Dubai court found Canadian anti-narcotics worker 
Bert Tatham guilty today on drug possession charges, sentencing him 
to four years in prison in the Arab emirate.

Barring any successful appeal, the Vancouver resident's main hope for 
early release is to be included in one of Dubai's periodic amnesties 
for selected offenders.

 From their Collingwood, Ont., home, Tatham's parents, Louise and 
Charlie, vowed to seek stepped-up help from the Canadian government 
to achieve at least that.

In Victoria, Tatham's bride-to-be, Sara Gilmer, said she hoped for 
his fastest possible return. "It's what I feared. I'm so 
disappointed," she said.

Dubai authorities arrested Tatham on April 23 as he entered the 
emirate after completing the first leg of his return trip to Canada 
from Afghanistan, where he had worked the previous 12 months helping 
farmers find alternatives to poppy cultivation.

He admitted he knew he was carrying dried poppy flowers -- which he 
planned to use as props during lectures -- but Dubai customs 
authorities also said they found him in possession of 0.6 grams of hashish.

The court's three-judge panel delivered their verdict after his 
defence lawyers argued at trial last week that the peculiarities in 
his work in Afghanistan -- where he had been involved in handling 
large amounts of hashish -- explained how some could have ended up in 
his clothes.

"We're hopeful of a good judgment after we explained everything about 
the nature of his job," Sharif Emara, legal adviser to Tatham's 
lawyer, Saeed Al-Ghailani, said just ahead of the verdict.

Louise Tatham, 60, said yesterday that "all this trouble" could have 
been avoided if her son had listened to her and abandoned his plan to 
spend a day and a half in Dubai, a common transport hub for 
travellers between south Asia and points west, to shop and sight-see.

"I'd told him to come straight back and to pass through Dubai, not 
stop off there," the mother-of-three said.

Tatham, 35, had planned to arrive April 25 at Vancouver, where 
Gilmer, 28, was to meet him.

Amnesties are presented as humanitarian acts in the name of Dubai's 
ruler, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Maktoum.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom