A woman in Qatar has been arrested for sex outside of marriage, after having filed a rape complaint with police. It sounds unbelievable, but unfortunately this occurs with frequency; and over the years, we have dealt with several cases of victims of rape being arrested, interrogated, and in some cases, even convicted of having sex outside marriage. Some women served lengthy sentences, while the man only served a month or so. Charging rape victims is beyond alarming, it is e

Once a judgment has been fulfilled, whether it be paying a fine or serving a prison sentence, the Courts should automatically process the removal of the cases from the national authority databases. However, we have found that approximately ten percent of fulfilled judgments are remaining as alerts that can lead to delays at border control points or unnecessary bureaucratic problems that need resolving, often at the most inconvenient of times. The process can be fulfilled man

Background: The new Cyber Crimes Laws came into effect in December 2012 (Federal Law No. 5 of 2012) and has recently been published in the media, following the deportation of an Australian National. The new legislation introduced stronger penalties and new offences that have the ability to impact anyone who does not apply diligence in their online communication. Offences to be aware of: While most of the legal provisions involve serious crime, there are some provisions that t

The UK High Court has ordered a new inquirty into the death of Lee Bradley Brown, who died while in police custody in Dubai. Lee's family and friends have insisted that he was murdered and have etablished a facebook support group called "Justice for Lee Brown, murdered by cops in Dubai". The original reports and accounts of what caused Lee's death were quite conflicted and no serious inquiries were conducted to conclusively resolve the cause. We hope that the fresh investiga

On the 21st of October 2014, Chief Technical Officer of Mobile application company "Duleaf" was detained at Sharjah after having been requested by security services to attend for questioning. Mr Mosaab Ramadan, an Egyptian National had been living in the UAE since 1995. He graduated from the American University of Sharjah in 2010 with a Bachelor of Computer Sciences then worked for a software development company. 10 months on, Mosaab's family can only speculate as to the r

A man was arrested last week on arrival at Dubai International Airport, after a police check returned false negative results. The accusations for which he was detained were of a petty nature. However, had his police and immigration check returned accurate results, the matter could have been resolved prior to his arrival. Police checks are not always thorough or accurate and are dependent on the quality of the person or entity hired to conduct the check. Results for police an

"I had a house under mortgage in the Marina in Dubai and couldn't make the repayments anymore after the crisis. I left and found a job in Europe and a year later, resolved payment with the bank. A couple of years later, I decided to make sure that there were no cases against me so did a police check. I was horrified that the bank had neglected to close their bounced cheque cases. I hate to think how long it would have taken to sort out had I gone back without checking. I cont