A BRITISH law student jailed for 25 years in Dubai for drugs offences was back home for Christmas after a shock release from prison.
Mia O’Brien, 24, was facing decades in a “living hell” after she tested positive for cocaine when she was arrested at a party while on holiday.
Her family began campaigning for her release after she was jailed in the summer and earlier this month revealed she had been given a pardon.
And her overjoyed mum Danielle McKenna, 46, has now told how she made it home in time to enjoy Christmas in Huyton, Merseyside.
Danielle posted a video montage of her with Mia in the early hours of December 25 entitled ‘She’s Home’, and said: “Home where she belongs.”
Replying to wellwishers, she added: “It’s like a Christmas miracle, best Christmas ever.”
Liverpool University law student Mia – who dreamed of becoming a solicitor – was arrested in October last year after travelling to Dubai to meet up with a friend and her boyfriend.
She was found to be in possession of 50 grams of cocaine, which had a UK street value of £2,500, when police raided a party she was at.
She later said she had snorted just one line of the Class A drug and pleaded not guilty when her case went to trial in July.
But she was convicted after a one-day hearing held in Arabic and sentenced to life, typically 15-25 years in Dubai, plus a fine of £100,000.
Danielle said at the time: “Mia feels she has destroyed her life as she wanted to be a solicitor.
“She is absolutely devastated by what has happened. Mia is being really strong but I know she is going through a living hell.”
The Detained in Dubai support group took up her case and its founder Radha Stirling said: “Dubai police have a history of rushing to secure convictions without the rigorous evidentiary standards we expect in the UK.
“Mia’s case could be the latest in a long line of miscarriages of justice.”
The group said it was helping Mia prepare an appeal, but it appears that she was released thanks to a royal pardon.
Her grandmother Rose, 70, said earlier: ” Someone was looking down on her for her to get this pardon.
“She just didn’t think things through. Dubai just does not tolerate drugs.”
A legal expert based in the UAE said: “They did not specify a reason for her release and such things are not made public, but keeping a young Brit in jail for 25 years would have been bad for Dubai’s PR, so I believe that would be why they decided to set her free.”
Mia was thrown in custody after the police raid although her friend– identified only as Emma – tested negative and was allowed to fly back to the UK.
Emma’s boyfriend was also sentenced to 25 years.
Mia was held in Al-Awir Central Prison – notorious for once being dubbed “Dubai’s version of Alcatraz”.
Her former cellmate told The Sun: “She said they were at a party and having fun and suddenly police turned up and put her in a car.
“There was drugs at the party and she said to me ‘I took drugs’. Mia knew she was in big trouble but didn’t seem to think she would be treated as a dealer.
“She seemed to take the view that while she had taken coke, she wasn’t dealing drugs.
“If what she’s saying is true and all she has done is a line of cocaine, 25 years is a horrifically long sentence.”
Former prisoners at the Central Prison have told how inmates were raped, tortured and even starved by the cruel guards.
Dubai’s prison system and government deny all the claims.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We have supported the family of a British woman who was detained in the UAE.”
Inside ‘Dubai’s version of Alcatraz’
MIA O’Brien was locked up in the Al-Awir Central Prison in Dubai.
The jail is used for both male and female convicts with them being seperated once they step through the chilling gates.
Women make up one of the four blocks inside the huge jail, according to the British Government website.
Horror stories from inmates who have previously been locked up and those from the families of Brits still trapped behind bars paint a disturbing picture of Al-Awir.
In 2012, Karl Williams was imprisoned for a year after police found drugs in the boot of his hire car.
He compared the Al-Awir jail to the “Dubai version of Alcatraz” during his sentence.
In his memoir, he recalled seeing inmates being stabbed to death in violent clashes that were not stopped by guards.
In a statement, he said that his testicles had been electrocuted while he was interrogated by police.
“They pulled down my trousers, spread my legs and started to electrocute my testicles,” he wrote in the statement.
“It was unbelievably painful. I was so scared. I started to believe that I was going to die in that room.”
Their lawyers also said that the men were forced to sign documents in Arabic at gunpoint.
Karl claimed Russian gangsters ruled the prison wards and allegedly used HIV-positive inmates to rape and deliberately infect others as a form of punishment.
At least four HIV-positive prisoners at Al-Awir were allegedly denied medication up to five months, according to another shocking report by the Human Rights Watch.
British footballer Billy Hood made similar accusations as he said prisoners were tortured and left to die from diseases.
His claims were repeated in 2021 by 60-year-old Albert Douglas who told The Sun prisoners are raped, tortured and even starved by the cruel guards.
Dubai’s prison system and government deny all the claims.
It comes after pregnant Brit drug mule Bella Culley landed back in the UK last month after a five-month ordeal in a hellhole jail in Georgia following her arrest for smuggling cannabis from Thailand.
The 19-year-old had told a court she was forced to traffic the stash from Thailand by a brutal gang who branded her with an iron and forced her to watch beheading videos.
But Bella’s dramatic release reignited hopes for former air stewardess Charlotte May Lee, 21, who remains locked up in a Sri Lankan jail.
Charlotte, from Surrey, was arrested at Colombo Airport in May after authorities allegedly found 46kg of the potent synthetic drug kush in her luggage.
The stash, reportedly worth £1.2 million, had been packed in large, vacuum-sealed bags.