Marcus, from Tottenham, North London, had been enjoying a holiday with his parents when he met a fellow Brit at the same hotel. A holiday fling sparked and the pair spent time together until the girl, also from London, flew back to Britain.
In Dubai, if an adult has a sexual relationship with a person under 18, they can be prosecuted for having a sexual relationship with a minor. The relationship would be legal in the UK.
Marcus and his parents were set to fly back shortly after - but their plans were thrown into chaos when police knocked on their hotel room door. The “terrified” teenager was then reportedly hauled in for questioning without any explanation and held at the Al Barsha Police Station, DID said. He spent three days there, during which time he was not allowed to make a phone call or speak with his parents, it is claimed.
Hard to feel sorry about anyone travelling to Dubai.
Correct for adults, but this was the kid travelling with his parents. It’s likely that the decision was the parents’ - also, most kids are not very well-versed in politics.
I’m pretty sure his parents were the ones making the trip and he was forced to come along whether he wanted to or not what with him living under his parents’ roof.
You don’t have to be rich to travel there. My brothers and their mother traveled there, not rich by any means. I’m probably more well off, but I haven’t been there. 🤷♂️
But maybe that wasn’t your point? Sorry if I assumed incorrectly!
They meant traveling to a pseudo-religious dictatorship
Yes, definitely! People should be allowed to break the law of the land if they disagree with it!
/s
I mean… Okay. But… A place can be interesting to visit despite its government. 🤷♂️
That’s not what this is about. Can you understand what you read?
I guess you just wanted to be snappy and leave the conversation? Cool…
Can you not be a dick about it?
Agree, it was a bit snappy.
I… can, yes. Why does it seem like I can’t? Why don’t you fill me in? 🙏
No need to be so hostile. 👍
I think you’re right, but also it says something about the personality too. I know great, respectable people in their own way who have gone there, but in general I agree with the vibe that it’s for “rich people who don’t care about inequality”
This is only applicable to people who have a wide variety of choices to pick from - if you ca only choose Dubai because your parents worked there as expats then you’re probably in the clear.
Knowing my family, Hanlon’s razor definitely applies here. People do not always know what’s going on politically or otherwise in a tourist place they visit. My family are not “great respectable people” (they’re good people though), so I’m gonna go with ignorance, for sure. 😅
Not sure why this is down voted lol. I’m just sharing an experience or life situation, and getting down voted. So strange. I feel like I’m back on Reddit. People don’t change from platform to platform, I guess.
This doesn’t actually say much about anyone’s actual wealth status in your story, you’re just saying you have more then them I guess? No banana for scale offered.
“They only have 2 yachts and only one can land a full size helicopter - so yeah… you don’t have to be rich to go to Dubai”
I have the family’s next vacation picked out! Saudi Arabia, where they’ll have a fully stocked bar of alcohol and pork waiting for them to enjoy! What could go wrong!
Stop spending your money in these Islamofascist countries!
I wonder if there is a law in the UK that would allow the parents of the boy to sue the mother of the girl for snitching. Like, she weaponized the laws of another country that criminalize behaviours that are legal in the UK, for things that happened between UK citizens abroad. That sounds like something UK legislators might have the power and incentive to legislate, right?
Also, I would not fault the girl if she hated her horrible mother for the rest of her life.
£20 says she’s white and racist.
You know, laws and code have a lot in common. In both, if you change something at the wrong place, another totally unrelated part will behave different or stop working entirelly. And then there’s edge cases, whose handling was entirely forgotten.
Ah, but it’s not unrelated, see, because now the cache invalidation logic that you hacked together to fix it last time isn’t triggering when it should, because you were using that condition as a hack based on the assumption that code wouldn’t be doing what it’s now doing. You’re gonna have to rewrite that entire bit in a more principled way. I think I lost track of the metaphor a bit here.
Is this all just AI talking to each other?
Of course
What AI?
The comments in this thread are practically Islamophobic and naive.
When you travel to another country, just abide by its culture and customs.
Like you cant go to India and disrespect cows, or now eat beef in public.
The comments are also naive because they show how unaware the commenters are about what actually goes on in rich countries and events for affluent people.
Uh yeah fuck Islam. Fuck the Judaism and Christianity too. See? Easy.
They’re certainly old enough
Okay so how do I fuck these religions exactly? I can go to these theocratic states and start doing whatever I want? Symbolising my freedom?
Why don’t you try it? Let’s see how far you can go to freeing humanity from the shackles of religion.
With a rocket. And I don’t give a fuck where you’re at.
if we’re shitposting after all, fuck you all. checkmate.
Seems like that’s exactly what The Satanic Temple is doing.
“The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien [beliefs and cultures]. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam, and it might not be unreasonable to suggest that it would have been better for Western civilization if Greece had moulded it on this question rather than Palestine.”
When you travel to another country, just abide by its culture and customs.
WDYM? The prophet “married” a
139 year old.Edit: It’s even worse.
Islamophobic? Nah. Naive, hell yeah. You should watch what you do like a hawk when you’re going to places like Dubai. Have a good understanding of what is legal and what isn’t, like eating outside during Ramadan - this can get you actual jailtime instead of a fine or a slap on the wrist like you’d expect.
Dubai is a shithole full of rich assholes and their slave workers and influencers who are paid to paint it in pink online.
i like the part where they have a constant line of tanker trucks moving shit from buildings to wherever they dump it, because they couldn’t be bothered building a sewage system.
Wait really? Do they really have no sewer lines/mains? LOL…
nope lol
That’s fucked.
POOP TRUCK POOP TRUCK
You thinking that acknowledging theocracy as awful is bigotry?
If I live in an islamic nation and am islamophobic does that make me racist to myself?
Akshually it’s islamophobia to say that a lot of the laws in Dubai are bad!
When you go through puberty, every single cell in your body is telling you to have sex NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW due to well over a billion years of evolution.
This culture is punishing a teenager for not fighting evolution.
Of course, they probably don’t believe in evolution either, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re punishing a teenager for lacking self-control (like most teenagers) and doing what his body is telling him to do in order to fulfil his biological imperative.
You Europeans really gotta stop vacationing in fucking Dubai, there are way cooler places to fly to.
The only good reason to be there is a connecting flight
My dad got there. They literally brainwashed him within a week. We had to prove him on multiple accounts that the tour guide lied to him.
elaborate omg??
I don’t know details anymore (10+ years ago) but in the vein of the economy being great and important, culture open minded, politics being exemplary, that stuff.
Or just don’t fly.
Literally
- Cairo
- Antioch
- Muğla
- Baghdad
- Umman
It’s fucking Dubai… Why would you want to go there?
A monument to man’s arrogance, literal slaves, rampant misogyny, homophobia Yada Yada. Terrifying laws based on ultra conservative religions. Routinely one of the hottest places in the world and extremely expensive.
Just fucking why?
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In its glory days, Britain had plenty of warm spots.
Yeah like Jamaica! An infinitely better place to vacation than Dubai.
Because for some people those are features.
But for people who those are features, they are very likely to be Muslim or at the least Arabic and therefore, probably somewhat similar to their home.
I’m saying for a westerner, to think you can go the and have a great time safely, you’re deluded.
But for people who those are features, they are very likely to be Muslim or at the least Arabic
Uh, I don’t think so. Perhaps very specifically the religious laws, but besides that you don’t have to look far among westerners to find those for whom…
man’s arrogance, literal slaves, rampant misogyny, homophobia […] one of the hottest places in the world and extremely expensive
… are rather a nice prospect, actually.
This place is so backwards.
Let’s look the past the fact you’re a moron, attempting to make a point on behalf of your brother’s in christ, the gays.
And let’s dive in.
Are there homophobic and misogynistic westerners who like slaves? Absolutely.
Now have a think how many of them also like Muslims and the middle east and want to go to a Muslim country with no alcohol that judges them?
Sshhhhhhh child, no more talking.
Lmao the “shh child” such a bad boy
I have the same mindset against Dubai and would never visit it. That said I know a perfectly normal colleague who has been there with his family 2 or 3 times and said he would probably go there again. Don’t recall why they liked it there that much.
You just can’t get the same calibre of mouth-shitting instagram whores anywhere else.
My guess is that the bri’ish family is either composed of rich assholes wanting to show off they’re rich, or of scammers that still haven’t got caught. Seriously, that city is a magnet for scammers to spend money on.
100%, I hated every minute of my layover wandering that shit-quality SimCity attempt, the bubble popped real fast once I talked to some locals.
I can’t wait for the sand to bury that cruel slave labor shitberg.
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‘Please tell my family in Pakistan that I’m still alive’ probably
“The restaurants are mid.”
Like, you know, rest of the Europe
I will never understand why this place is idolized by so many people…
Money
Lotsa influencers get free shit when making positive content about it.
It’s a good place to launder money.
Along with what everyone else said, it’s basically Las Vegas without the casinos and the booze, and with a beach.
If you don’t care about politics, gambling or drinking, it’s another theme park for adults.
Or why you’d even vacation there. How tf did they convince people to vacation in a desert?
FOMO. makes it seem exclusive. For whatever reason at least 50% of humans are just wired to want to feel better than everyone else. The actual experience itself doesn’t matter as long as they can brag about it knowing that others weren’t able to achieve it. Dubai literally has ice shipped in from melting glaciers so that rich people can put it into their drink https://arcticice.ae/
Seriously, it’s like worse Vegas, and I don’t like Vegas at all
I’d like Vegas if there was like an airconditioned pedway to walk around the strip out of the heat and away from the crazies but still be able to observe like a human zoo.
It’s way better than Vegas, at least they maintain the place. Vegas reminded me of a junkyard full of crackheads and flashy lights.
Vegas wasn’t built by slaves.
Vegas is run by people paid below minimum wage.
Cute. They took the passports of Indians who traveled there to build it.
And employers in Vegas threaten the immigrants with deportation if they complain to any authorities about the work conditions. Stop pretending Vegas is somehow good in any way.
And yes, Dubai has bad working conditions too.
Really? I loved Vegas and can’t wait to go back. Full disclosure though I’m not really a gambler and we didn’t hit the casinos at all but there’s some really cool stuff in that area.
A bit of an unwarranted answer, but many richer Pakistanis go there to buy stuff that isn’t easily available back home. Hence, they become cash cows for the ginormous malls over there (seriously. If you think American malls are big, you haven’t been to Dubai). It’s basically the closest foreign city we have direct flights to, due to our sanctions and all with India. For example, I got my Nintendo 3DS, and later the phone that I’m currently using (Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra), from malls in Dubai.
How much are plane tickets? Flying somewhere to buy things is weird to my brain.
They were undoubtedly cheaper before, but with a low-budget airline like airblue, at least, a round-trip ticket between Lahore and Dubai, for a single adult, economy class, can cost 85,216 PKR or 306.23 USD.
Choosing a more expensive airline like Emirates bumps it up to 138,028 PKR or 496.01 USD.
(Source: Google Flights)
To be fair, my father at least would often buy stuff while he had another reason to be there (i.e. for business).
Well if you’re an American, it might start making more sense to you in a few months when we have fucking 100% tariffs on imported shit (or whatever the fuck he’s going to do).
If you are talking about social media it is likely that they aren’t allowed to post something negative about the country or else you can be fined. If you are working as an influncer in Dubai you’ll need to obtain an license which regulates what you can post but you basically pay no income taxes
If you are working as an influncer in Dubai you’ll need to obtain an license which regulates what you can post but you basically pay no income taxes
Because the propaganda you’re providing for them would be priceless…
For the Middle East, it’s relatively progressive, from what I understand. That being said, that’s a low low bar.
I first thought you wrote “from the Middle East” yeah no. Dubai is Saudi Arabia with better PR.
If you have money
I should amend: if you’re there wilingly, it’s relatively progressive.
They have a pretty open love for western money. If you have the funds ($$$$$$$$), you can do pretty much whatever you want.
But if you aren’t extremely wealthy, you get to experience the oppressive true nature of the place.
Guess which group goes to Dubai and tells people about their experiences.
💰 💵💰
Paris is too passé nowadays, you can’t be an asshole showoff when the place is full of peasants
The kind of Europeans who only go to Spain, Amsterdam, and Dubai
Spain, Amsterdam, and Dubai
What makes those three fit together? I’ve been to Barcelona and Amsterdam, but wouldn’t dream of going to Dubai.
What’s with Spain?
Is the answer prostitution?
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Fuck Dubai.
Signed me, who grew up there.
Man I’d be interested to hear about that. Any interesting insights?
Like any hotspot for the wealthy: hypocrisy and corruption as far as the eye can see.
What was it like
Sorry for the delay.
The best way to describe Dubai in the late 80s and throughout the 90s was rapid fire change and building like there’s no tomorrow. When I was a kid back then most of the neighborhood where I grew up was still mostly sand lots with no building. It was actually a fairly nice place to live even then, but if you actually had interests in things as a kid you were kinda out of luck. There wasn’t that much to do back then or things to learn to do or clubs you could be a member of. Or maybe there were, but my parents weren’t aware of them.
However if you were a gamer, you were kinda in luck. I grew up with a Commodore 64 and later IBM 386 machine at home and we had no problems getting games for them (and most were pirated since software piracy was so incredibly rampant that people thought the originals were like a rare find). Console games were also sold in many places and Dubai in the 90s was LOUSY with Arcades. Like the principale place I would go to were arcades. Most were hinky-dink holes in the wall full of seedy assholes (not of the drug using variety… because possession of even small quantities of drugs can land you a very long sentence, even life), but if you got them to fuck off it was nice to immerse yourself in those machines.
However Dubai never felt like home. Not for me and not for many other people even if they were born there. This is in no small part owing to the fact that there is no birthright citizenship (with very limited exceptions of course), and also the fact that everyone you will know there is a foreigner who just came in to do a job and leave afterward. This even includes people like my dad who was in the country for nearly 30 years working as a computer engineer for various companies (he was paid very well for his services). The racism that exists there is also quite palatable. Nowadays they have hate crime and hate speech legislation that may or may not curb some people’s racist expressions, but back then, you basically had people who had no problem saying they would want nothing to do with ‘dirty people’ that was very thinly veiled racism. I was on the receiving end of a world of bullying and mistreatment from Indians, Filipinos, and Emaratis who all didn’t seem to compute it in their minds that I was fully human. The Indians were, to a large extent, the worse of the bunch in that regard. I had people stab my eyes and had been absent mindly cut by sharp objects from (they were being VERY negligent with their shit) and they reacted to me saying ‘you cut me! I’m bleeding!’ like someone would react to radio static. They simply did not understand why them phyiscally harming me would lead me to having an outburst against them.
In short, it was generally shit all around and I am glad I am not there anymore.
Dubai is a terrible place. People need to stop going there.
I even worry about transiting places like this.
We Pakistanis don’t have much of a choice… We often have to stop at Dubai or Doha if we want to fly to Europe or the Americas. (Although occasionally, you can choose Turkish Airlines and stop at Istanbul instead.) Though to be fair, Pakistan can’t be much more friendly than Dubai to a lotta people…
I’m curious how the authorities were even aware of this occurring. The article says they were on holiday, so it’s not like there was much time. How did anyone notice their ages? Was it just fishing for a charge because of unrelated reasons?
Either
-
They’re always watching. I’m in tech and was taught in my security training - when traveling to countries with extremely strong surveillance, assume you are bugged. Family could be high valued and they wanted something from the parents. Probably a bit too tinfoil hat.
-
Vengeance girl’s parents could be assholes/racist. As a dude, Ive had my share of “mommy & daddy doesn’t like me for taking their precious flower”. Multiplier in effect if they have a problem that I’m a PoC.
If you check the article it says it’s the 2nd case, the girl’s parents notified the Dubai authorities
It was the mother of the girl. She got back to the UK found out about the boy and contacted the Dubai authorities. Apparently the girl was days off her 18th birthday too. It was in the news report when he was originally arrested.
Wrecked a young man’s life for some bullshit reason.
Wow, 2 years older in mere days. Must be a leap year.
Sorry typo. Fixed
You already know that Mommy phoned it in but after reading several articles I’m going to guess she did it because her family is Muslim. According to another article his family knew about it but didn’t care however she was hiding it from her family because they were “quite strict”.
I won’t discount racist assholes of course but you’d have to be SERIOUSLY over the top to know about this law in Dubai, let alone be willing to make an international phone call to the Dubai police about it. This smacks of religiously motivated behavior.
I think either of those are super plausible. There will be people where they stayed who are happy to snitch, no bugs required. On top of that, the UAE has one of the highest concentration of surveillance cameras in the world. Like 30,000 in Dubai. Throw in some facial recognition cross referenced with the list of folks on vacation or on business in the city and it’s real easy to find out who is spending time together, what their ages are, and what their kids will look like.
The second one happens all the time. Happened to me when I turned 18 before my then girlfriend. Her mom threatened me with jail and all kinds of shit even though it was perfectly legal and we were only a couple of months apart. She just didn’t like me or the fact that I was dating her daughter. Would have probably been worse if I had been a PoC.
You’ve left out the good old snitch, my understanding is they’re pretty darn strict with anything that involves women over there, so maybe someone from the hotel saw something and reported it.
-
Did you read the article?
The girls mother reported him to the Dubai police.
Hopefully her identity is revealed to the public and she faces some consequences for her actions. Maybe it’s already been leaked or released elsewhere, but it wasn’t in that article.
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I don’t believe that detail was in the article when I read it, but I’m unable to find any copies from before the update. I can tell you the article now is very different from the original.
After returning to the UK and seeing pictures and chats, the girl’s mother reported the relationship to Dubai police, who then arrested Mr Fakana at his hotel, it is alleged.
Probably saw them socializing and then followed him on security cameras. Possibly seeing him go in her hotel room or vice versa. Then they haul him in and he admits what went on
I think everyone here thinks that Dubai is like Saudi Arabia. It’s not. Nobody at all cares who is having sex or not in Dubai, there’s a thriving sex work industry there. The police aren’t monitoring for couples or care. This only got escalated because a mother complained and the daughter was underaged.
If you have money.
Otherwise, the authorization laws are there, ready to be applied when convenient
https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-arab-emirates/freedom-world/2020
Please note freedom house can certainly be considered biased in their rankings, but their descriptions of conditions or situations is relevant
It’s not a free country, but that’s not relevant to the point I was making above. They’re still not sex policing like Afghanistan or Iran. On that topic they’re closer to Las Vegas.
And yes, the authorization laws are everywhere, I know an American who got charged with adultery in the US because he had an unfriendly prosecutor. I think you’re missing my point.
You can have concerns with the bias of the source but it’s relevant for discussion. It’s not like you say, you walk a razor of financially guarded privledge there, and many folks do not live as you describe.
You’re describing the advertised, candy coated version.
Late edit: to compare the authoritarian concerns in UAE / Dubai to the US is disrespectful to folks who live there.
Even later edit, I bet you didn’t see this cause you downvoted me the moment i posted lol,
It’s not a requirement to be Afghanistan-bad to be still a very problematic place, and comparing the private liberties of either to America is a miss.
No. While there is a ton of inequality, there, it still does not change the fact that UAE is not Iran or Afghanistan, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, the police will still not arrest you for holding hands in public, police will not stop to ask you if you’re married to the girl you’re with, and if you’re having sex outside of marriage literally nobody will care. UAE does not have morality police like Saudi did. You failing to make this distinction undermines the rest of your argument. As to this story, the police in any country would take notice if a woman called and said her daughter is underage and with a man in a foreign country, so it’s not surprising he got detained and the story progressed from there.
Out of respect, I had late edits focused on the relativism between countries.
Uae / Dubai is a authoritarian surveillance state far beyond the US or any western country. They have the money to be “pro” about it and don’t need roving squads of cops making street arrests. That doesnt mean the civil liberties of many aren’t adjacent to the likes of other worse authoritarian theocracies.
Regarding the later point, I agree, if given a reputable concern from the family, I don’t fault Dubai for making legitimate inquiries, based on evidence.
Aside from those specifics, There is no reason to defend these countries, they won’t reward you.
But why were they watching in the first place? How did they know their ages?
Authoritarian countries like Dubai watch visitors.
It would be pretty easy (with big error bars but since when did authoritarians give a shit about that?) to set up some alerts based on facial recognition when someone under 18 (they have their passport information) is hanging out with someone over 18 who did not arrive in the same party.
I won’t say I’ll never go to Dubai, but I will say I’ll do my best to never end up there.
Sry no sympathies. You vacation in a religiously oppressive hell hole this is what you get. Stay the fuck out of Dubai.
Okay look. This dude is 18. His brain isn’t fully developed, he didn’t even graduate from high school yet, his hormones are out of control, and he has a penis.
If you still can’t see why he wasn’t thinking clearly, please read this article Teen Brain: Behavior, Problem Solving, and Decision Making from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
No sympathies? He didn’t choose where to vacation, his parents did. Should children pay for their parents’ mistakes?
As I’m reading this story I keep wondering…
How in the hell did the authorities even catch wind of this even happening?
Did someone report them?
Are all the rooms tapped and monitored Stasi-style?Well, did you read it?
After returning to the UK and seeing pictures and chats, the girl’s mother reported the relationship to Dubai police, who then arrested Mr Fakana at his hotel, it is alleged.
Mother of girl reported him after they had left and he was still there.
Teenagers in love are hardly subtle. Staff probably reported them.
What’s up with the breaks as if you’re writing poetry?
Just newline characters for formatting - it’s possible that whatever app you’re using doesn’t properly support the markdown. I had issues with that on Sync before switching to Thunder.
Weird. I use sync and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it
On one hand, yeah, that sucks.
On the other hand, you go to a foreign country, you’re subject to their laws, and it’s on you to be aware of them.
There are weapons that I could happily lug around in the US that the UK would take issue with if I were to be doing so in the UK. Do I personally feel that British law is going the right way on this? No. However, it’s British territory, and so British law has jurisdiction. Saying “but I’m from the US and that would be perfectly legal back home” isn’t going to carry a lot of water with British courts, or, I expect, with British public opinion.
Similarly, a Brit can’t exactly go to the UAE and just do as one does in the UK and expect the UAE to accept it because something’s legal in the UK. International travel is a lot cheaper and easier than it ever has been historically, but once you walk across the line of a sovereign territory, it’s got real consequences, and if you choose to travel internationally, it’s on you to be aware of them. That country isn’t just a tourism spot for people from Country X, but a home for people who live there. They’ve got their own rules and concerns.
The chief executive of campaign group Detained in Dubai said Mr Fakana felt abandoned by the British government. He’s expected to appeal against his sentence.
I don’t really see a reasonable complaint against the British government here, at least from the article text.
Good luck leaving your penis behind when you travel.
In this case, a teenage penis.
“Wasn’t me.”
