Marcus Fakana gets prison sentence in Dubai.

[Ohnonotmeagain]

This is the 18 year old lad who had a holiday romance with a 17 year old girl in Dubai. She was just short of 18.

her parents found out and reported him to the Dubai authorities before he returned home.

his poor parents aren’t well off and had to return home to work leaving him there.

he’s now been sentenced to 1 year in prison.

aibu to think this poor boy should never have been brought before court.

Easy for you to say EmmaMarie isn't it, so blasé about someone else's liberty, a teenage boy at that.

I prefer the first one “Enemy poster” 😂

He committed a crime under Dubai law. We wouldn't expect tourists from other countries to get away with committing crimes here due to it being legal in their home country. He's got a year. It's not that long in the grand scheme of things. He just needs to keep his head down, do his time, and then come back to the UK and get on with the rest of his life.

I feel so sorry for him, poor chap ♥️ It’s part of the reason I’m terrified to go to these sorts of countries in case I unwittingly break a law and end up locked up for years.

Why on earth did they take it further!

I’ve just read an article on Detained in Dubai, about how you can be held or arrested for things you’ve done before going there. One man was held until the charity lawyers helped him out, for sending emojis they didn’t like to a business in Dubai. While in another country!!

There is not a chance Id go there.

The government can lobby the Dubai government fur leniency.

They do it on behalf of many other prisoners/convicted.

This is a highly publicised case, the defendant is a young person, there is a lot of public sympathy, so yes, I would expect some diplomacy efforts.

I would imagine they'll let him out after a few months.

Oops😬

People around the world question laws all the time as this is someone's life you are discussing, their real life, their existence and their incarceration, it is not just a news article to them.

100% guess … Brit high commission didn’t know that he was British.
Guessing his profile etc that gurl saw was not his full name, girl maybe didn’t know it. His SM maybe had a spoof surname & home ….

Girl not telling her mum 100% truth, or she did not know 100% facts about MF.

When was last time teenagers in trouble told 100% truth to adults (excepting Young Sheldon, of course)

Good point. God imagine being almost 18 and your mum phoning up around the world about your sex life. Mortifying. Why did she even tell her.

My heart bleeds for him and his family.
Hoping and praying for it to be over soon

I think a DBS only shows crimes committed in the UK so it won't even show on a DBS unless I'm mistaken?

I believe that’s the case.

however he will have to account for his year spend in Dubai, and most employers will do the basics of plugging his name into google.

it’s not “up to the employer” in many cases. No school, employer in a profession involving vulnerable people etc will let someone with a sex offending conviction through the door, the risk is too big.

Landing cards / entry-visa for many countries ask about convictions,

@fashionqueen0123 I read somewhere the mum found out because she looked through her daughters phone and found texts between them

I'm very torn on this one. Part of me thinks we all have a responsibility to adhere to the laws of the countries we visit, so have to expect the consequences

The other part of me thinks that the authorities in Dubai should have treated this with leniency. A fine, a warning or even a suspended sentence if such a thing exists there. I feel desperately sorry for that poor boy.

And the girls mother is a bitch. She is beyond contempt

Obviously if you are visiting another country I believe you should follow their laws, but this seems a rather odd thing for their authorities to prosecute since neither of them were actually from the UAE or a resident there. I wouldn’t think it would be a good look for them to do this to a tourist, then again any country that is ruled by Sharia law isn’t a country I’d want to visit anyway.

Sorry to break this to you but we deport foreign national criminals all the time, it’s actually a government priority to do so. The Home Secretary has a legal obligation to deport foreign nationals sentenced to a year or more in prison (with some exceptions such as if they’re refugees)

Does anyone know if under 18s who engage in sex in Dubai are guilty of a crime as well? Or is it just the 18+ person who gets charged?

I’m wondering if the 17 year old girl had still been in Dubai would she have been held responsible for anything?

Also it might appear that Britain normally do more because the Detained in Dubai organisation who have a lot of experience with these cases had strong words for the government. I wonder if they’ve said similar about the government response to other cases?

Marcus Fakana, of Tottenham, “feels abandoned by the British government and Keir Starmer”, Detained in Dubai said.
Radha Stirling, the group’s chief executive, said the sentence was an “utter disgrace” and “an embarrassment to Britain”, adding that “the UK has prioritised trade deals over people’s lives

Nope, they're the victim of a crime.

I feel hugely sorry for him, but he has broken the law in that country and has to pay the consequences. We wouldn't want a tourist to our country to think the law doesn't apply to them, would we?

Having an age of consent is morally repugnant? Don't be ridiculous. The UK has such laws. The fact that another country sets the age differently than we do is irrelevant. In Dubai it is 18. 18 is far from unusal, and is shared by many countries. It has bugger all to do with compassion and everything to do with the fact that we expect "foreigners" to abide by our laws and so it is to be expected that we have to abide by the laws of the country we visit. There are more than enough threads about young men in boats being criminals and dangers, without even the decency of a trial or evidence to prove that as a fact. So it seems that as ususal MN is two-faced - we can say and do what we like about people not from our country, but we expect special treatement abroad for the British.

Occasionally, yes. But our prisons are full of foreign nationals who committed crimes here, so your argument doesn't wash. I don't recall hearing that their countries are asking for them to be returned either.