Bahtatboy

Col al-Ali, 46, brought the woman to the US as a household servant for himself, his wife and five children, promising her $10 (£6.14) per hour for 40 hours of work a week, Assistant US Attorney Mary Rogers said.

Instead, he forced her to work seven days a week, often until midnight, without pay and refused to let her talk to anyone outside the family or to leave the house on her own, Ms Rogers said.

Col al-Ali's lawyer Victoria Walton put the discrepancy down to a misunderstanding and to a language barrier.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12980760

lionheart

Not sure where you are going with this. There have been several recent reports of similar acts of neo-slavery in the UK as well, not necessarily involving employers of Middle East origin. I don't think anyone seriously believes that it's only Arabs who abuse their maids.

shiva

of course not, most of the horror cases in the west have involved indian and pakistani protagonists, who seem to view abuse of domestic staff as virtually a right if not a sporting pastime

Boomhauer

The difference is in the UK or US or other Western democrasy, it is not wink wink sanctioned / given a pass by the government, unlike the Arab countries where the authorities just turn a blind eye or worse punish the victim.

Bahtatboy

several v prolific is where I'm going if you have to ask

lionheart

I trust you are not a regular contributor to 7Days or Gulf News.

shiva

God no can't stand either rag so hardly likely to write to them.

Norm_uk

Indeed...and like so many things in the West if there is a problem it will eventually be exposed and dealt with openly and seriously. Apologies will be issued and people will try to move on.

Switch to this region and people still can't admit things like the long running Arabian-African slave trade which went on longer than the Atlantic slave trade. I've yet to meet anyone from here who will admit that a third of the Christian world was annexed three centuries before the first crusade either.

So denial about modern problems like their treatment of labour is hardly going to be surprising. In any case they can always blame George Bush or the Zionists who that pastor who burnt a Koran can't they?

N.

Boomhauer

You can take the Emirati out of the UAE but you can't take the .....

Not the first time an Arab government official has been found abusing their servants abroad.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12980760

SugarMetal

That's more an issue of historical knowledge as it is anything else. And to to be fair I don't think many people in the Western world know about history which predates the first crusade by three centuries!

Boomhauer

I am optimistic that this scumbag gets his just desserts . The cynic in me thinks that since the US considers the UAE an important ally and one of the big oil producers, who knows?? US officials and UAE might collude and try to get some sort of deal going to get this POS off , like maybee conferring diplomatic immunity or some other trickery. I think Obama admin is much less prone to pull something than the previous one.

Bahtatboy

Didn't work recently in the UK when the murdering Saudi tried to claim diplomatic immunity.

Norm_uk

It's a lot more than a lack of historical knowledge...it's often pure denial even when presented with facts.

A more recent example would be the 1.2 million Europeans taken as slaves by the Barbary Pirates (a proxy of the Ottomans...now our "friend" Turkey...who also engaged in genocide of Greeks, Armenians and Kurds recently but deny all and continue to occupy Cyrpus!). The Barbary Pirates forced the USA to form a Navy and defeat them decisively as they refused to stop attacking merchant shipping from the new country (see the Treaty of Tripoli).

It has been argued that colonialism into much of the middle east was a response to piracy. The entire UAE was forced to be British protectorate because they raided our merchant ships for decades...

N.

shiva

RAK used to be the regional superpower until we sank 300 odd vessels in rak harbour in 18somat and is still a topic of contention locally

seven seas

So what's Ms Walton trying to say?

The maid was offered a contract of 24/7 slavery but it wasn't translated correctly?