British woman locked up for a year in Dubai prison on drugs charges is released

A British woman who has been released from jail in Dubai for drugs-related charges was fined for overstaying her visa.

Isabella Daggett served nearly a year in prison in the UAE following nearly a ‘whole year of hell’, her family said.

Ms Daggett, 22, was locked up in March 2025 after being accused of possessing illegal drugs.

The charges were understood to have been dropped by January but the young woman from Leeds was held in the Gulf city for a further two months after being handed a £3,000 fine for overstaying her work visa.

Ms Daggett returned home on a flight last Friday, amid disruption to air travel due to events in the Middle East, Daily Mail reported.

A friend said that Ms Daggett’s family were relieved to have her back, but that the overstay fine after her ordeal was a ‘kick in the teeth’.

The self-employed beautician and modelling agency co-owner moved to the tax haven to take up a recruitment job last year.

However she was arrested in a raid shortly after her arrival in the city, which is known for its zero tolerance for drugs.

She was placed in one of Dubai’s detention centres along with a man she had been staying with, who was not her partner.

The exact details of Ms Daggett’s charges remain undisclosed.

Dubai has one of the world’s strictest drug laws, with those found with even the tiniest trace of narcotics potentially facing jail for years.

Her grandmother Heather Smith put the incident down to her keeping the ‘wrong company’.

‘Wrong place, wrong time. Wrong boyfriend’, she said last May.

‘She [Isabella] was arrested with a lad that was not her boyfriend, who she was staying with because things had fallen through with another house.’

Ms Daggett remains wary of sharing details of her time behind bars in Dubai, where criticism of authorities is a criminal offence.

But her family spoke out when she was incarcerated last year, explaining that she was treated far worse than male prisoners.

While she was allowed to speak to her mother and grandmother every day, she was reportedly denied a shower for a month and a change of clothes for three months.

Since arriving home, Ms Daggett has shared pictures of her and her motheron a boating trip in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire and has written about looking forward to holidaying in Ibiza for a ‘hot gal summer’.

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