UAE : With friends like these........

From 2003

ISTANBUL, August 7 (Compass) -- Following lengthy judicial delays, the United Arab Emirates deported Rev. Fernando P. Alconga back to Manila on July 23, more than nine months after he was arrested in Dubai.

"We have a smile on our lips and tears on our cheeks, just to be here," Alconga told Compass by telephone from Manila today. The Filipino pastor said a representative from the presidential palace and a TV camera crew met him, his wife and son on the tarmac at the Manila airport.

A Filipino pastor living in the UAE since 1994, Alconga was arrested at a Dubai shopping center last November and jailed for "preaching other than the Muslim religion" because he gave an Arab Muslim a Bible.

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