Journalist arrested briefly for writing about mustaches

Reporters Without Borders said freelance journalist V. M. Sathish's passport that was confiscated when he was briefly arrested in Dubai on 13 December 2005 for allegedly libeling a jewelry chain by reporting that it ordered its employees to shave off their beards and mustaches.

Sathish, who writes for several news media organizations, was summoned by the Dubai prosecutor's office on 13 December 2005, interrogated and detained for several hours over a 22 August 2005 article in the "Khaleej Times" daily reporting that the Alukkas jewelry chain had told its 400 employees they would henceforth all have to be clean-shaven.

The managing director of the chain, Joy Alukkas, reacted to the article by bringing a libel action against Sathish.

Sathish told Reporters Without Borders he felt "imprisoned" and that his inability to move about freely in the region was hampering his work as a journalist. "To be treated like this, like a criminal by the Dubai police... they put handcuffs on me and jailed me... just for writing about mustaches," Sathish exclaimed.