Dubai authorities say those involved in a nude photo shoot on a balcony that went viral and sparked repression in the city will be deported
DUBAI, UAE – Those involved in a nude photo shoot on a high-rise balcony in Dubai will be deported, authorities said on Tuesday, after the images went viral and sparked repression in the Arabian Gulf Sheikh.
Dubai authorities arrested at least 11 Ukrainian women who posed naked in broad daylight along with a Russian male photographer accused of public debauchery and producing pornography. Earlier this week, images and videos of naked women splattered social media and sent a shock wave through the emirate, where a legal code based on Islamic law, or Shariah, has made foreigners resort to the imprisoned for tamer crimes.
After an unusually quick investigation, Dubai Attorney General Essam Issa al-Humaidan announced that those behind the photo shoot would be sent back to their countries, with no further details. Dubai police have refused to identify the detainees. More than a dozen women appeared in the widely shared video. Ukrainian and Russian authorities confirmed the arrest of their citizens on Tuesday, but the nationality of the other detainees was not immediately known.
Rapid deportation is rare for the legal system of Dubai, an absolutely ruled sheikh. These cases are usually brought to trial or resolved before deportation.
“The prosecutor ordered the deportation of the accused for their behavior contrary to public morals,” al-Humaidan said, adding that the women’s group had been accused of violating the country’s public decency law.
Dubai is one of the top destinations for influencers and Instagram models in the world, filling their social media channels with stylish bikini-clad selfies from luxury hotels and the artificial islands of the coastal emirate. But at times, the city’s branding as a foreign tourist destination has sparked controversy and clashed with the sheikh’s strict rules governing public behavior and expression.
The nude photo shoot scandal came just days before Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar, and when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed in nearby Doha, Qatar, for an official visit to the State. Over the years, Dubai has increasingly been promoted as a popular holiday destination for Russians. Cyrillic signs are a common sight in the city’s main shopping malls.
The generally pro-Kremlin tabloid Life identified the detained Russian man as the head of an information technology company in the Russian region of Ivanovo, although his company denied it had anything to do with the photo shoot. The Associated Press was unable to determine whether the detainees had legal representation or reached out to a lawyer for them.
Stanislav Voskresensky, the governor of Ivanovo, asked the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian ambassador to the United Arab Emirates to offer their support to the Russian man.
“We do not abandon ours,” Voskresensky wrote on social media.
It is not the first time that influential foreigners on social media, amateurs and professionals, are taking unwanted control in the UAE. Earlier this year, as Dubai was touted as a great haven for pandemic-friendly parties for travelers fleeing strong closures elsewhere, the stars of European reality TV shows were attacked by have flaunted their Dubai vacation by the pool on social media and to bring the coronavirus home. Later, Denmark and the United Kingdom banned flights to the UAE as virus cases in the seven-sheikh federation increased.
Although the UAE has recently made legal changes to attract tourists and foreign investors, allowing unmarried couples to share hotel rooms and residents to drink alcohol without a license, the Arab Gulf country’s judicial system remains tough. sanctions for violations of the law of public decency.
Nudity and other “obscure conduct” carry penalties of up to six months in prison and a fine of 5,000 dirhams ($ 1,360). Sharing pornographic material is also punishable by imprisonment and heavy fines. Major state-owned telecommunications companies in the country block access to pornographic websites.
Foreigners, who make up about 90 percent of the UAE’s population of more than 9 million, have been jailed for online comments and videos, as well as for crimes considered benign in the West, such as kissing in public.
Dubai police often turn a blind eye to foreigners who misbehave, until they do.
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Associated Press writer Daria Litvinova in Moscow and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, UAE contributed to this report.