A British teenager has been jailed for one year in Dubai for having s3x with a 17-year-old girl during a holiday romance.
Marcus Fakana, of Tottenham, north London, was informed by his lawyer following a brief trial, with the verdict leaving his family ‘devastated’.
The 18-year-old was with his family in the UAE when he met and had s3x with a 17-year-old girl from London.
Detained in Dubai, which represents Fakana, said the teen ‘feels abandoned by the British government’ following the judgement, which it branded ‘an utter disgrace’ and ‘an embarrassment to Britain’.
The teen and his loved ones had faced an agonising wait while UAE officials determined his fate, which could have seen him caged in a hell-hole jail in the Middle East for 20 years.
Marcus was arrested in August after the mother of the girl he had a holiday fling with filed a complaint about Fakana to the Dubai authorities on her return to the UK.
She had checked her daughter’s phone and discovered they had been sleeping together. Since returning from Dubai the girl has turned 18.
Under strict UAE law, only tourists aged over 18 are legally allowed to sleep together.
The police investigation revealed that the sex between the pair was consensual after they examined all the messages the pair had exchanged.
They have also recovered CCTV footage from Dubai hotels that show the couple together.
Marcus has previously told how the couple had planned to see each other when they got home.
Marcus said: ‘We had a wonderful time together. 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.
‘They said they were taking me in for questioning but wouldn’t tell me why. I couldn’t imagine what for. I was frightened and my parents were terrified.’
After his detention, the teen’s distraught family appealed to Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who is also their local MP, as well as the ruler of Dubai to try and secure his release.
However, Mr Lammy was accused of ‘abandoning’ the young Brit, with Marcus’s family this week claiming he had not followed up on the teen’s plight.
According to Radha Stirling, founder of British-based aid organisation Detained In Dubai, which is helping Marcus, the Fakana family is ‘upset’ that Mr. Lammy has not chased up the case further.
Speaking today, she said Fakana would appeal his ‘unreasonable’ sentence.
‘Marcus feels abandoned by the British government and Keir Starmer who just spent the weekend in the UAE,’ she wrote in a blistering tweet on X.
‘While people like JD Vance and the Irish government have been able to resolve cases of injustice and bring their citizens home, the UK has prioritised trade deals over people’s lives. This is truly abhorrent.
‘David Lammy and Keir Starmer have failed Marcus. This is an embarrassment to Britain.
‘The UK was once the most diplomatically influential Western country in the Middle East. Now, we are seeing countries like Canada, Malaysia, Ireland, and the US leaving the UK way behind.
‘The Labour government should be ashamed they have not secured the freedom of a teenage tourist. It wasn’t a difficult job.’
Stirling added: ‘He was desperately hoping to come home this week but prosecutorial mishandling in the first stages of the case meant it wasn’t heard as a misdemeanor when it should have been
‘The family have issued a plea to Dubai ruler, HH Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, to spare Marcus for consensual s3x with another British citizen.’
In a post on the Detained In Dubai website, a statement from Marcus said the Foreign Secretary had ‘sent a couple of letters’, but that he had not heard anything back since.
‘All they have done is send a couple of letters. I am not aware of any diplomatic communications or meetings with UAE counterparts. I feel abandoned, that I am going to lose my life over this, before it’s even really begun,’ Marcus said.
Marcus’s statement comes after his family last month warned that his mental health was ‘declining’.
Stirling added: ‘Marcus is 18 years old, but faces the demise of his entire life for being intimate with someone in his same school year, who is his same age.
‘This is where Dubai authorities need to be intelligent about their application of the law. Marcus had consensual relations with someone his own age, from his own country while on a short holiday.
‘He does not deserve to be locked up in Dubai Central Prison for a fling’.
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