[R-G] In Rape Case, a French Youth Takes On Dubai

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/world/middleeast/01dubai.html>
November 1, 2007
In Rape Case, a French Youth Takes On Dubai
By THANASSIS CAMBANIS

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 31 — Alexandre Robert, a French
15-year-old, was having a fine summer in this tourist paradise on the
Persian Gulf. It was Bastille Day and he and a classmate had escaped
the July heat at the beach for an air-conditioned arcade.

Just after sunset, Alex says he was rushing to meet his father for
dinner when he bumped into an acquaintance, a 17-year-old native-born
student at the American school, who said he and his cousin could drop
Alex off at home.

There were, in fact, three Emirati men in the car, including a pair of
former convicts ages 35 and 18, according to Alex. He says they drove
him past his house and into a dark patch of desert, between a row of
new villas and a power plant, took away his cellphone, threatened him
with a knife and a club, and told him they would kill his family if he
ever reported them.

Then they stripped off his pants and one by one sodomized him in the
back seat of the car. They dumped Alex across from one of Dubai's
luxury hotel towers.

Alex and his family were about to learn that despite Dubai's status as
the Arab world's paragon of modernity and wealth, and its well-earned
reputation for protecting foreign investors, its criminal legal system
remains a perilous gantlet when it comes to homosexuality and
protection of foreigners.

The authorities not only discouraged Alex from pressing charges, he,
his family and French diplomats say; they raised the possibility of
charging him with criminal homosexual activity, and neglected for
weeks to inform him or his parents that one of his attackers had
tested H.I.V. positive while in prison four years earlier.

"They tried to smother this story," Alex said by phone from
Switzerland, where he fled a month into his 10th-grade school year,
fearing a jail term in Dubai if charged with homosexual activity.
"Dubai, they say we build the highest towers, they have the best
hotels. But all the news, they hide it. They don't want the world to
know that Dubai still lives in the Middle Ages."

Alex and his parents say they chose to go public with his case in the
hope that it would press the authorities to prosecute the men.

United Arab Emirates law does not recognize rape of males, only a
crime called "forced homosexuality." The two adult men charged with
sexually assaulting Alex have pleaded not guilty, although sperm from
all three were found in Alex. The two adults appeared in court on
Wednesday and were appointed a lawyer. They face trial before a
three-judge panel on Nov. 7. The third, a minor, will be tried in
juvenile court. Legal experts here say that men convicted of sexually
assaulting other men usually serve sentences ranging from a few months
to two years.

Dubai is a bustling financial and tourist center, one of seven states
that form the United Arab Emirates. At least 90 percent of the
residents of Dubai are not Emirati citizens and many say that Alex's
Kafkaesque legal journey brings into sharp relief questions about
unequal treatment of foreigners here that have long been quietly
raised among the expatriate majority. The case is getting coverage in
the local press.

It also highlights the taboos surrounding H.I.V. and homosexuality
that Dubai residents say have allowed rampant harassment of gays and
have encouraged the health system to treat H.I.V. virtually in secret.
(Under Emirates law, foreigners with H.I.V., or those convicted of
homosexual activity, are deported.)

Prosecutors here reject such accusations. "The legal and judicial
system in the United Arab Emirates makes no distinction between
nationals and non-nationals," said Khalifa Rashid Bin Demas, head of
the Dubai attorney general's technical office, in an interview. "All
residents are treated equally."

Dubai's economic miracle — decades of double-digit growth spurred by
investors, foreign companies, and workers drawn to the tax-free
Emirates — depends on millions of foreigners, working jobs from
construction to senior positions in finance. Even many of the criminal
court lawyers are foreigners.

Alex's case has raised diplomatic tensions between the Emirates and
France, which has lodged official complaints about the apparent
cover-up of one assailant's H.I.V. status and other irregularities.
The tension and growing publicity over the case seem to have prompted
the authorities to take action.

Mr. Demas, from the Dubai attorney general's office, said he had no
intention of prosecuting Alex and was seeking the death penalty for
the two adult attackers. "This crime is an outrage against society,"
he said.

However, the investigation file in Alex's case and a pair of
confidential French diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times
confirm the accounts of inexplicable and at times hostile official
behavior described by Alex and his parents.

"The grave deficiencies or incoherence of the investigation appear to
result, in part, from gross incompetence of the services involved in
the United Arab Emirates, but also from the moral, pseudoscientific
and political prejudices which undoubtedly influenced the inquiry,"
the French ambassador to the United Arab Emirates wrote in a
confidential cable dated Sept. 6.

Most infuriating to Alex and his mother, Véronique Robert, is that
police inaccurately informed French diplomats on Aug. 15, a month
after the assault, that the three attackers were disease-free, the
diplomats say. Only at the end of August did the family learn that
that the 36-year-old assailant was H.I.V. positive. The case file
contains a positive H.I.V. test for the convict dated March 26, 2003.

"They lied to us," Ms. Robert said. "Now the Damocles sword of AIDS
hangs over Alex."

So far the teenager has not tested positive for H.I.V., but he will
not know for sure until January, when he gets another blood test six
months after the exposure.

A doctor examined Alex the night of the rape, taking swabs of DNA for
traces of the rapists' sperm. He did not take blood tests or examine
Alex with a speculum. Then he cleared the room and told Alex: "I know
you're a homosexual. You can admit it to me. I can tell."

Alex told his father in tears: "I've just been raped by three men, and
he's saying I'm a homosexual," according to interviews with both of
them.

The doctor, an Egyptian, wrote in his legal report that he had found
no evidence of forced penetration, which Alex's family says is a false
assessment that could hurt the case against the assailants.

In early September, after the family learned about the older
attacker's H.I.V. status and the French government lodged complaints
with the United Arab Emirates authorities, the Dubai attorney
general's office assigned a new prosecutor to the case. Only then were
forensic tests performed to confirm that sperm from all three
attackers had been found in Alex.

Alex stayed in Dubai in order to testify against his attackers, and
went back to school in September, despite suffering unsettling
flashbacks.

In early October, however, the family said, their lawyer warned Alex
that he was in danger of facing charges of homosexuality and a prison
term of one year.

Veteran lawyers here say the justice system is evolving, like the
country's entire system of governance that has blossomed as the
economy and population have exploded in just a few decades. Despite
its shortfalls, the United Arab Emirates have combined Islamic values
with the best practices from the West to create "the most modern legal
system among the Arab countries," said Salim Al Shaali, a former
police officer and prosecutor who now practices criminal law.

In business and finance, the nation has worked hard to earn a
reputation for impartial and speedy justice. But the criminal justice
system has struggled, balancing a penal code rooted in conservative
Arab and Islamic local culture, applied to an overwhelming non-Arab
population of foreign residents.

A 42-year-old gay businessman who would speak only if identified by
his nickname, Ko, described routine sexual harassment by officials
during his 13 years living in Dubai. He cut his shoulder-length hair
to avoid attention, he said, but after years of living in fear of jail
or deportation, he is leaving the country.

Although rape victims here generally keep quiet, some who have been
raped in Dubai have shared testimonials in recent days on
boycottdubai.com, a Web site started by Alex's mother.

Prosecutors moved forward with the case against her son's attackers
only as a result of public pressure and diplomatic complaints, Ms.
Robert believes. Now, she hopes, the attention could prompt more
humane and even-handed justice for future rape victims here.

On advice of his lawyer and French diplomats, Alex says he will not
return to Dubai but wants very much for the men to be convicted.

"Sometimes you feel crazy, you know?" he said. "It's hard, but we have
to be strong. I'm doing this for all the other poor kids who got raped
and couldn't do anything about it."
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>