Vacation romances are the stuff of rom-coms and chick-lit — however not for 18-year-old Marcus Fakana, who’s going through a one-year jail sentence for his summer season fling.
The development apprentice from London was on vacation along with his household in Dubai in September when he met a fellow British teenager at his lodge, they usually started a romantic relationship that grew to become sexual.
The pair deliberate to proceed their budding connection in London. However when the 17-year-old lady returned to the UK, her mom found the connection and reported Fakana to Dubai police.
“It was very traumatic. I used to be taken from the lodge with out being informed why. I wasn’t allowed to name anybody, together with my mother and father,” Fakana informed CNN in a written assertion shared by his authorized advisory crew, Detained in Dubai. “All the pieces was in Arabic and I didn’t know once I would get out. I wasn’t given entry to a lawyer, the embassy, or my mother and father.”
The age of consent within the United Arab Emirates – of which Dubai is the most important metropolis – is eighteen, making the lady a minor on the time of her relationship with Fakana.
“I didn’t intend to interrupt the legislation, I didn’t even know she was one month away from being 18,” says Fakana, including he didn’t contemplate age a difficulty as they had been in the identical faculty 12 months.
{The teenager} says he’s sorry and regretful for breaking legislation — however is interesting to the conservative monarchy’s Prime Minister and Dubai ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, to repeal the one-year jail sentence handed right down to him final week, “to let me go residence for Christmas with my household.”
A ‘trendy’ vacationer vacation spot
Dubai is standard with Western European vacationers, who flock to the beach-side metropolis for its heat local weather and luxurious way of life. Town hosted a record 17.15 million international visitors final 12 months, and its airport served 87 million passengers, making it the second-busiest in the world.
However most vacationers are unaware of how totally different the authoritarian nation’s authorized system is, being primarily based on each civil and Sharia legislation.
Dubai has marketed itself as a “trendy and liberal vacationer vacation spot,” which may be “complicated for vacationers” once they come up in opposition to little-known legal guidelines or the arbitrary software of them, says Radha Stirling, CEO and founding father of Detained in Dubai, a UK-based authorized advisory and human rights group.
Because of this, Fakana’s case is simply the most recent instance of a foreigner in bother within the Metropolis of Gold.
Marcus Fakana, 18, was handed a one-year jail sentence in Dubai on December 11, 2024. – Detained in Dubai/PA
Laws round relationships, alcohol and on-line exercise are among the points vacationers mostly run into. Whereas alcohol consumption is authorized in licensed venues in Dubai, and get together tradition is “widespread,” anybody caught with alcohol of their system in a public place may be charged with public drunkenness or consuming alcohol and not using a license, says Stirling.
“Nobody would suppose that it’s unlawful to go away a venue, get in a taxi, and go residence – however when you’re outdoors the venue, you’re violating the legislation,” she provides.
One other space of confusion is the nation’s sweeping cybercrime laws, which cowl on-line exercise from hacking and terrorism to unfriendly comments and promoting charities. These legal guidelines apply to personal and public communications, retroactively and internationally — so one thing you share on-line earlier than you journey to the UAE can nonetheless result in prosecution after you arrive, says Stirling.
“I’d say nearly 100% of holiday makers to the UAE are already in violation of these legal guidelines, if somebody made the hassle to report them,” she says. This 12 months, a 39-year-old Irishman was detained in Dubai for 3 months over sending a “threatening emoji,” and a Northern Irish man was detained for 2 months over a negative Google review.
Dubai police and its authorities media workplace didn’t reply to requests for remark from CNN.
‘It will possibly break you’
Whereas the UAE has one of many highest charges of foreign prisoners on the planet — not stunning given its inhabitants is round 90% non-Emirati — Stirling says most of these detained within the UAE don’t find yourself serving jail time.
The strict software of those legal guidelines is critical to keep up public security and safety, says Azaan Salahuddin, managing companion at Dubai-based legislation agency Al Adl Authorized. “Legal guidelines are supposed to defend residents, or individuals coming in from outdoors the nation,” he says.
He pointed to the nation’s low crime price: in Dubai, official police figures recorded simply 24.6 crimes per 100,000 people in 2023. That is considerably decrease than the UK’s price – measured on a special ratio fully – of 84 per 1,000 people.
“Each nation that I’ve been to enforces their legal guidelines,” says Salahuddin, including that ignorance is just not an excuse and it’s every traveler’s accountability to know the legislation. In Fakana’s case, “it’s clear that the lady was below the age of consent and her mother and father have solid expenses,” he says. “It’s a easy case.”
UK International Secretary David Lammy, who can also be the member of parliament for Fakana’s constituency, Tottenham, echoed these sentiments: “It’s the case wherever you’re on the planet – and that’s why the International Workplace makes clear on its website what the principles are – that you simply observe the principles and the legislation in line with that nation.”
A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated he “acknowledges it’s an especially distressing scenario for Marcus and his household,” and that the International Workplace “is in common contact along with his household and his authorized crew at this tough time.”
Tori Towey talking to media after arriving residence to Dublin Airport together with her aunt, Ann Flynn (left) and her mom Caroline (proper) on July 11, 2024. – David Younger/PA
However different foreigners have additionally discovered the UAE’s authorized system, and plenty of caveated legal guidelines, complicated.
In July this 12 months, Tori Towey, a 28-year-old Irish flight attendant for Dubai-based airline Emirates, was going through six months in jail for trying suicide and consuming alcohol.
Towey, who lived in Dubai for one 12 months, says her companion grew to become bodily abusive after they moved in collectively. She reported the home violence to the police, however her companion made a retaliatory case in opposition to her, leading to a journey ban that prevented her from working or leaving the nation.
“The police informed me that if I dropped the case, my journey ban could be lifted,” Towey says. However this didn’t occur. “That simply put me in a very dangerous scenario. I had nowhere to go. I had to return to him. I simply felt like I used to be simply caught, like there was no assist,” she informed CNN in a cellphone interview.
After trying to take her personal life in Could this 12 months, Towey discovered herself on the police station going through expenses of tried suicide. Within the UAE, suicide is unlawful, regardless of a widely publicized announcement in 2020 that it could be decriminalized.
“I needed to discover out for myself what the costs had been, as a result of I wasn’t informed,” she says. Discovering authorized illustration was tough, too. “Legal professionals gained’t even take a look at your case with out 20,000 dirhams (about $5,400) up entrance.”
Towey lastly bought authorized recommendation from Detained in Dubai, and with mounting stress from the Irish authorities and the media highlight on her story, her two-month journey ban was lastly lifted, the costs had been dropped, and she or he was capable of return residence.
Earlier than the incident, Towey says she was glad in Dubai, and nonetheless has loads of love for town and tradition she left behind. “It’s simply the system and the stress that it could trigger. It will possibly break you, as a result of you may lose every thing,” she says.
An unsure future
In the meantime, Fakana’s mother and father needed to return to the UK for work, and he stays in Dubai, alone.
“I’ve been right here for 4 months and it’s been nerve-racking and financially draining,” he says. “I’ve been and not using a household for a very long time, struggling anxiousness, complications, and sleepless nights.”
Stirling believes Fakana’s case ought to have been tried on the courtroom of misdemeanors, alleging that the police incorrectly said his age as 19 and his nationality as Pakistani of their report, which she says possible led to a harsher judgment.
Fakana and his attorneys at the moment are deciding whether or not to enchantment his one-year sentence in Dubai Central Prison, a jail with a poor file for human rights abuses and torture — though there’s an opportunity the prosecution will search a fair harsher sentence.
“I heard they may give me a superb and deportation as an alternative and I’m pleading for that,” Fakana says.
“It’s been an eye-opener; this has been probably the most nerve-racking time of my whole life.”
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