More than a year and a half ago, we brought you the story of an American citizen jailed in the UAE for making a spoof YouTube video.

In October 2013, Shezanne Cassim and a group of friends produced a video which poked fun at  some youths in the Satwa neighborhood of Dubai. Dubbed the “Satwa Gs” back in the 1990s, they were stereotyped as “ganstas” who adopted hip hop and rap culture, music and dress — with a lot of false bravado.

The video (below) shows a fictional street-fighting school where the Gs learn how to fight defend themselves – using ridiculous weapons such as the sandals which are worn by UAE men.

Six months after posting the video on YouTube, Cassim found himself locked inside a maximum-security prison, charged with using the internet to publish “caricatures” that are “liable to endanger state security and its higher interests or infringe on public order.”

Cassim served nine months in prison and was deported to the United States in January of this year.  Now, Cassim is appealing to the government of the UAE for a full pardon, restitution to himself and his family — and finally, to be allowed back into the country which, he says, is the only home he’s really ever known.

In a May 9 letter UAE President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Cassim asks for amends for harm done to himself and his family:

My time in prison destroyed my career, and my family’s efforts to secure my release nearly bankrupted them. My imprisonment caused significant financial and emotional hardship, and we all felt betrayed by the country in which my siblings and I grew up and for whose growth my parents gave decades of their lives.