London club Fabric has launched a petition calling for DJ Grooverider to be released - as previously reported, the drum & bass DJ was jailed for four years after being caught taking a small quantity of cannabis into Dubai last year. The United Arab Emirates have notoriously strict drug laws.
10,000 people have already signed the petition, which calls the sentence "ridiculously excessive". The venue stresses that it recognises it doesn't exist to "offer social or cultural commentary on another country's values systems", but says that it hopes their petition "might help challenge this sentence and proceed in the very least to having Grooverider deported home as soon as possible".
You can check and sign the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/gr00v3. Whether any campaigning here will have any effect on authorities in Dubai remains to be seen. As previously reported, leniency in this domain isn't unprecedented. In 2006 Grammy award winning music producer Dallas Austin was prosecuted for taking cocaine into Dubai, and also faced four years inside, but he was pardoned by the emirate's Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.