Inside Dubai prison teen will be locked up for holiday romance

British teenager Marcus Fakana is facing a year in Dubai’s Al Awir prison, where inmates have reported ‘torturous’ and ‘hellish’ conditions for having sex with a holiday romance.

The 18-year-old was on holiday in the UAE with his family last September, when the mother of a 17-year-old girl he had a holiday ‘fling’ with reported him to the police.

Marcus, who is from Tottenham, surrendered himself to authorities in Dubai and is set to begin his one-year prison sentence.

The teen has since issued a desperate plea to Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler to be allowed to travel back to the UK and avoid the ‘hellhole’ of a prison over the allegation – which would be legal if it had happened in England.

Speaking to campaign group Detained in Dubai, Mr Fakana said he and his family were ‘devastated’ by the allegations, and that he ‘never intended to break the law.’

‘Let me go home. Please give me my life back,’ he told the campaign group.

In the UAE, it is against the law to have sex with people aged under 18 outside of marriage, and Marcus previously faced up to 20 years in jail.

Al-Awir prison, where Marcus will be housed, is notorious for its brutal conditions where inmates have reported suffering from horrific illnesses and being tortured for confessions.

Rape is an ‘everyday occurence’ in the jail, an earlier report suggests, with violent assaults carried out by inmates and guards alike, MailOnline reports.

British citizen Karl Williams was held in the jail for a year in 2012 after synthetic cannabis (also known as spice) was found in the boot of a hire car he was using.

In a memoir written after his release, he revealed the intense conditions he had faced while incarcerated, including seeing men stabbed to death, his testicles electric shocked and living in fear that he would be gang raped by corrupt prison guards.

‘I saw men get stabbed in the neck and others sliced down their faces. Blood splattered every surface as prisoner after prisoner was sliced.’

Williams said the prison was ‘run by Russian gangsters’, who would use HIV positive inmates as a form of chemical warfare to infect and rape others as a form of punishment.

Mr Williams described the torture inflicted on him by guards, where they ‘pulled down’ his trousers before electrocuting his testicles.

‘It was unbelievably painful’, he wrote. ‘I was so scared. I started to believe that I was going to die in that room.’

Prisoners are separated by gender on entry, and men are forced to have their head shaved when they begin their sentence.

If their hair gets too long, they are punished.

As many as 20 people share cells designed for three or four people, and several people share beds at a time.

Conditions for women are said to be more brutal, with Inmate Dinchi Lar reporting a minimum of 10 people in her cell sharing three bunkbeds, so she had to sleep on the floor.

Over the course of three months, she was only able to step outside and see the sun for fifteen minutes, she told ITV.

British former prisoner Zara-Jayne Moisey was locked up in Al-Awir after she reported her own rape.

‘It was the most frightening experience of my life, absolute torture, and all because I went to the police about what happened in the hotel room,’ she told The Sun.

‘I will never forget the jail, it’s the worst place I have ever been.

‘They kept the lights off in the day so we’d be eating in pitch blackness. Then they turned them on at night so no one could sleep.’

A report in 2019 conducted by Human Rights Watch found that foreign detainees were denied life saving HIV treatment while incarcerated at Al Awir.

HIV-positive prisoners said they received regular testing, however they were not granted access to treatment.

‘The UAE is determined to uphold the highest standards on the treatment of prisoners and does not discriminate against individuals on the basis of health conditions, in line with our commitment to global human rights,’ a statement to the BBC read.

However, inmates said prison officials were ‘indifferent’ to requests for care, and positive prisoners faced stigma and discrimination.

Marcus and his family are hoping for a pardon from Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, and charity Detained in Dubai has called for Foreign Secretary David Lammy and the UK’s embassy in the UAE to assist in the case.

A GoFundMe page set up to aid the Fakana family with legal costs has now reached more than £45,000.

Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai, said ‘We hope the government of Dubai will see that it is counter-productive to imprison a young tourist for something that is perfectly legal in his country and that, at the base of it, is terribly damaging and unfair. The experience will change Marcus forever and is completely unnecessary over consensual sex with another British tourist.

‘British tourists have been jailed for sex outside marriage in the past and rape victims for adultery. It was later recognised that this was unfair and laws and enforcement have significantly changed as a result. We hope Sheikh Mohamed Al Maktoum will recognise the severity of the sentence in this case with the special circumstances and show compassion towards Marcus and his family.”

Speaking to Ms Stirling, Marcus said he will focus on his health and mental health when in jail.  ‘Marcus is hopeful that in beginning his ordeal today, he will be home sooner than he would be if he appealed.  He is requesting UK government assistance in appealing for a pardon and hopes Dubai’s ruler will commute his sentence.  It is difficult to have the right words to tell a young man turning himself in for a year in Dubai prison.  He’s very brave and kind and I truly hope he will be home soon’.

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