British teen jailed for having sex in Dubai spent birthday and New Year alone
A British teenager jailed in a ‘hellish’ prison in Dubai for having sex with a 17-year-old girl wasn’t allowed to speak to his family on his birthday.
Marcus Fakana, from Tottenham, was 18 when he turned himself over to UAE authorities to start a one-year-sentence behind bars on December 30.
Having spent New Year in isolation, Fakana was then kept from contact with his family as he turned 19 in a prison reported to have ‘torturous’ and ‘hellish’ conditions.
In an update shared on X, the CEO of campaign group Detained in Dubai, Radha Stirling, said: ”Marcus Fakana spent New Year’s in isolation and his birthday in Dubai jail.
‘The now-19-year-old, has been able to telephone his family. He’s hanging in there.’
The Al Awir prison where Fakana is locked up is notorious for its cramped conditions, where inmates fall ill while crammed 20 to a cell designed to house just three of four people.
Prisoners claim they’ve been tortured for confessions, and rape is reportedly an ‘everyday occurrence’, carried out by both inmates and guards.
Fakana had travelled to Dubai with his family to celebrate his father’s birthday.
While there, he’d struck up a holiday romance with a 17-year-old, also from the UK.
He told the Detained in Dubai: ‘We really liked each other but she was secretive with her family because they were strict.
‘My parents knew about our relationship but she couldn’t tell hers. She had to meet me without telling them it was to see a boy.’
But the girl’s mother found chats and pictures on her phone after returning to the UK and reported Fakana to Emirati police.
As sex with people under 18, outside of marriage, is illegal in the UAE, Fakana found himself arrested and facing up to 20 years in jail.
If the girl was still in Dubai, she would have been arrested too.
Stirling said: ‘The police had discretion to charge him with a misdemeanour like ‘offensive behaviour’ or similar, but chose to charge him with the felony of sex with an underage girl, the same law a 40 year old engaging in sex with a 14 year old would have been charged with.’
Marcus and his family are now hoping for a pardon from Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum.
Detained in Dubai has also called for Foreign Secretary David Lammy and the UK’s embassy in the UAE to assist in the case.
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