Dubai likes to promote an image of itself as a civilised, elegant and cosmopolitan resort for the well off. In this it has succeeded well enough. After all, such aware and tasteful people as the Beckhams would never have bought a home there if it was simply a bin for the vulgar rich.
There is of course another side to Dubai. The dark Muslim Law side. The Shariah Law side. In June 2008, 27 year old Australian Alicia Gali was drugged and gang raped by co-workers there at the Starwood Le Meridien hotel. Slipped a sledgehammer knock-out potion in the bar, she woke up with four broken ribs and covered in bruises. She says the hotel ( No scandals please ) and the Australian consulate ( Don't rock the boat Sheila ) told her to keep quiet. She says that the hotel even went as far as to withhold her passport so that she couldn't get out of the country for proper medical treatment. When she eventually got to a local hospital, she was advised that she had most definitely been brutally raped whilst unconscious and should report it to the police. She did. Big mistake! Made to sign a document in Arabic that wasn't translated for her, she was given a year in the slammer for " sex outside marriage ". She served eight nightmare months, the same as the perps. Under Shariah Law, you are not raped unless four male witnesses say you were.
Alicia's case is high profile and disgusting but, throughout the Muslim world, prisons are well populated with women rape victims who cop the double whammy. Get raped and go to prison. Nice.
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