Откривам темата с разказ на един британец за преживелиците, който той и негов колега спотър са имали в ОАЕ и по-точно в Дубай. Забележете, че двамата не са снимали, а само са гледали и записвали регистрации, което (гледането) било забранено там
Hi
Got a last minute trip to, Dubai 23rd to 27th November and stayed at
the
Sheraton Deira, as recommended by other contributors to this site.
Excellent vantage point to view aircraft, however, due to the heat
creating
offshore/onshore breezes, this can play havoc with trying to id the
Emirates
fleet. Generally during the day aircraft take off runway 30 ,over the
sea,
and at some point during early evening runway 12 becomes active.
Most of the good EK stuff (A343, A345 new 773's) land between 11pm and
3 am,
but the roof top pool shuts at 10.30pm. Then they all take off again
between
7.30 and 10.30 am. Heat haze prevents reading off any registrations
until
mid afternnon.
So, in my despeartion to catch up on all the landing "goodies" we
ventured
out on Saturday night, and round the side of the Hotel and started
reading
off the landing aircraft. At 2am several police paid us a visit and
asked
what we were doing, so i naturally told them looking at planes and
taking
their numbers. 15 minutes of native speak back to base resulted in us
being
whisked, briskly, to the 7 star Dubai Police Station.
They kept us waiting for 30 or so minutes, and put us in an interview
room.
A long time was spent, by countless police officers looking through my
log
book and my bincs. Then the questioning began and as you can imagine
their
incredulity at our hobby. The questioning then took a more curious tone
as
to George Bush/ Tony Blair and war, so I had to come out with the
standard
"war is terrible, Bush and Blair are wrong ...bla...bla" response.
Then they advise it is illegal to look and photograph planes in the UAE
- I
say what about the Dubai Airshow? "that's different was the reply.
After
about an hour of questioning we were adised to wait for the National
Security Service to speak to us - Out of the blue, our chief
interrogator,
sternly asks for our passports (which we don't have on us), disappears,
then
comes back and says "sorry to have kept you, you can go now - shook our
hands and told us to walk back to the Hotel (5am).
On the Monday, 6 national dress wearing security service chaps came to
the
hotel and interrogated the pair of us, separately. For 2 hours we were
asked
all sorts of personal questions - all family details, close friends,
name
adress etc. all education and work details since birth. All the
countries
visited whilst doing this hobby. Then, like a job application, a large
section of "supporting evidence" where they tried to turn our
explanation of
"plane spotting" into something they could understand.
At the end they made us sign a statement to say "I promise to never
look at
or photograph airplanes in the UAE again" They apologised for taking up
our
time, reassured us that we were NOT criminals and what they had done
was
merely procedure. They then said we look forward to seeing you again
in the
near future"
The hotel manager then apologises to us but advises us that a permit is
required to do what we do???
This could have been a damn sight worse - If they had searched the pair
of
us and found our scanners, this may have been more difficult to
explain!
On return home, a colleague tells me that a Colombian guy was detained
for 4
days for taking a photo of a building he liked, in Abu Dhabi.
Now, it's my own stupid fault for getting lifted and not checking the
archives for relevant information and for local customs, but I don't
recall
any recent contributors encountering any problems or talking about
permits
etc...??
This is sent as a warning only - We may be the only guys to have had
this
treatment or ever will. The cops may have been talking rubbish, and
purely
making an example of us, I don't know?