{"id":124629,"date":"2025-09-07T03:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T03:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/124629\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T03:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T03:25:09","slug":"mia-obrien-mum-reveals-why-23-year-old-sentenced-to-life-in-dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/124629\/","title":{"rendered":"Mia O\u2019Brien: Mum reveals why 23-year-old sentenced to life in Dubai"},"content":{"rendered":"

A British law student has been sentenced to life in a Dubai prison after authorities found 50g of cocaine in her apartment, her mother has revealed.<\/p>\n

Mia O\u2019Brien, 23, from Huyton in Merseyside, was handed a 25-year sentence following her arrest last October, with her family initially keeping the exact details private.<\/p>\n

Her devastated mother, Danielle McKenna, 46, disclosed the size of the drug stash for the first time, saying the cocaine was discovered inside Mia\u2019s flat \u201cin one big chunk.\u201d<\/p>\n

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According to Danielle, Mia, who attended Liverpool University, got \u201cmixed up with the wrong so-called friends\u201d during her time at university.<\/p>\n

All three people present in the apartment, including a friend and that friend\u2019s boyfriend, were arrested and charged with drug dealing.<\/p>\n

Mia pleaded not guilty to intent to supply, but after a one-day hearing in July, the judge found her guilty and imposed a lengthy sentence.<\/p>\n

\"MiaMia O\u2019Brien. Credit: Facebook<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trial was all in Arabic and Mia was told of the sentence later by her lawyer. She is absolutely devastated by what has happened. Mia is being really strong but I know she is going through a living hell,\u201d Danielle told the Daily Mail.<\/a><\/p>\n

The young student is now being held at Al-Awir Central Prison, where she shares a cell with six other women and sleeps on a mattress on the floor, according to her mother.<\/p>\n

Prison conditions have been described as dire, and Mia\u2019s family say she feels scared amid reports of violence and neglect. \u201cShe was crying on the phone and saying \u2018Oh mum \u2013 please forgive me\u2019,\u201d Danielle recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cMia feels she has destroyed her life as she wanted to be a lawyer or solicitor,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prison conditions are horrendous. There are no staff really and she has to bang on a big door if she needs anything,\u201d Danielle said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s seen fights and said she has been really scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MiaMia O\u2019Brien has been sentenced to life in horrific conditions in a Dubai jail, with her mother revealing what led to her arrest. Credit: Faceboo<\/p>\n

Mia\u2019s mother insists her daughter is innocent and was \u201ccaught up in it,\u201d describing Mia as \u201ca victim of a miscarriage of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cI definitely don\u2019t think she was going to sell the drugs or bring them back. It\u2019s a lot of drugs but there are others involved and she has just been caught up in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s never been in trouble and is not a drug taker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mia has not seen her family since her arrest. As her mother tries to remain hopeful that an appeal or clemency deal might eventually bring her home, she says Mia \u201cjust wants to come home\u201d and misses her young brothers intensely.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe just wants to come home. I want her home too \u2013 she\u2019s my only daughter. I can\u2019t wait to come home. She said the prison can be scary but she\u2019s just trying to keep her head down,\u201d Danielle said.<\/p>\n

A GoFundMe was set up by the family to help with legal fees and travel costs to Dubai but was recently taken offline for violating the site\u2019s terms about funding legal defences for certain offences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A British law student has been sentenced to life in a Dubai prison after authorities found 50g of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40,1720],"class_list":["post-124629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}