The woman reportedly was drinking for six hours before a taxi driver said that she got into his taxi drunk. The manager with a company in Dubai tried to withdraw money from a machine to pay for the taxi but was unsuccessful. When the driver took her to her apartment building, he said that a car pulled up with three Iranian men. They allegedly told him that they knew the woman and paid her fare. They then put her in their car and drove off. The victim says that she was taken to their apartment where they took turns raping her and videotaping the assaults as she begged them to stop.
Two 20-year-old Iranian men have been charged with the assault. The defense counsel insists that the whole story is fabricated and that the victim “watches a lot of action movies”. However, police report that one of the defendants admitted that he was concerned about kidnapping a “British woman” but was convinced to do it by his friends. That raises the chilling prospect that kidnapping local women is less problematic and they may be less likely to go to police given the harsh treatment afforded to raped Muslim women. We have previously discussed the perverse attitude toward rape among some in this region.
Public interest groups have long complained of the mistreatment and even prosecution of rape victims in Dubai and other Muslim countries. We have followed these troubling cases (here and here and here and here and here and here), though at least this case involves a prosecution of the alleged culprits.
Source: Independent