A British teen caged over a holiday romance with a 17-year-old girl faces spending a year locked up in one of Dubai‘s most notorious hellhole jails.
Marcus Fakana, 18, was left ‘shocked beyond belief’ after receiving the shattering news yesterday he would be jailed for having sex with a girl just a few months younger than him while holidaying in the UAE with his family.
The construction apprentice from Tottenham, north London, was sentenced to a year behind bars for his secret fling with the girl, also from London and who has since turned 18.
Distraught Fakana will be locked away in al-Awir central prison, a high-security jail miles away from the Emirates’ famed beaches, which houses death row inmates, murderers, terrorists and violent gangsters.
The brutal lock-up is located in the middle of arid Dubai desert, where scorching temperatures can reach a hellish 50 degrees in the summer.
Rape is an ‘every day occurrence’ in the nightmare prison, according to a report from earlier this year, with violent assaults carried out both by inmates and guards.
Prisoners are packed into overcrowded cells, with 20 inmates battling for three beds. Others are often left to suffer with horrific illnesses with little to no medical care, while some have been jailed after having allegedly been tortured into giving confessions.
Harrowing accounts from Brits previously banged up in al-Awir have revealed how violent knife-wielding thugs roam the high-security facility, carrying out savage attacks on other inmates while guards watch on.
Marcus Fakana had a weeklong holiday romance with the girl, also British, but was arrested and detained after her mother complained to the Dubai police
A policeman enters Dubai’s Al-Awir central prison in the United Arab Emirates
A doctor shows a hallway at the medical centre of Al-Awir prison during the Covid pandemic
Karl Williams, a Brit who was jailed for a year in 2012, revealed in his memoir how he saw men being stabbed to death, had electric shocks administered to his testicles and feared corrupt police would gang rape him.
He described seeing packs of guards stood by without intervening as inmates attacked each other: ‘I saw men get stabbed in the neck and others sliced down their faces. Blood splattered every surface as prisoner after prisoner was sliced.’
He also said the prison was run by ruthless Russian gangsters, who would use HIV-positive inmates to rape and infect others as a means of punishment.
Mr Williams, along with fellow Brits Grant Cameron and Suneet Jeerh said they were given electric shocks and had guns held to their heads during their time in al-Awir.
‘They pulled down my trousers, spread my legs and started to electrocute my testicles,’ Mr Williams wrote.
‘It was unbelievably painful. I was so scared. I started to believe that I was going to die in that room.’
The men’s lawyers also said that they were forced to sign documents in Arabic at gunpoint. Emirati police denied the allegations.
In another horror account, 25-year-old Illford man Suneet Jeerh was caged in the jail in 2013 after being arrested with two friends from Wanstead after police found ‘spice’, a synthetic form of cannabis, in their car.
Karl Williams claims he saw men torn apart by knife-wielding inmates, while others were forcibly infected with HIV during his time in the hellish Dubai prison. Here he is pictured in his cell during the horror ordeal
Karl Williams has written about his experience inside the prison in a new autobiography called Killing Time. Here is a picture of one of the meals he was served
Speaking at the time, his sister Davena Kumar told the Illford Recorder how her brother was forced to endure hellish conditions.
‘He’s sharing a cell with someone who’s been sentenced for life,’ she told the paper. ‘They’ve made him watch other men being raped, like it’s a lesson.’
When she visited after he’d spent a month caged in the prison, she claimed he had wasted away.
‘He was skinny and he wasn’t himself,’ she said, adding: ‘He was banging on the door calling my name and I just wanted to hug him.’
Al-Awir houses male and female criminals in separate buildings. Prisoners must have a shaved head at all times, starting when they enter and they are punished if their hair gets long, while women reportedly have to wear head coverings.
Punishments include bans on TV and calls to home, with phone access severely limited regardless. Prisoners are rarely allowed visitors.
Several people share beds at a time, with as many as 20 people sharing cells designed for three or four people.
While many of the most high-profile accounts of the grim conditions have come from men in recent years, the situation faced by women is feared to be even more brutal.
Suneet Jeerh was caged in the jail in 2013 when he was just 25 and was reportedly forced to watch prisoners as they raped another inmate in his cell
Speaking at the time, his sister Davena Kumar (pictured left with her brother Suneet) told how her sibling had faced a traumatic experience in the jail
The prison is located in the Dubai desert miles away from the UAE’s famed beaches
Inmate Dinchi Lar said that in her jail there were a minimum of 10 people for three bunk beds, meaning she was forced to sleep on the floor.
‘There’s nothing like personal space… you are sleeping and somebody is in your face. You’re literally sleeping on top of another person,’ she told ITV.
Over three months Ms Lar said she was only able to step outside and ‘see the sun’ for a 15-minute period.
She had been arrested after being slapped with a travel ban after she filmed immigration officials when she and other fellow Nigerian passengers were detained upon arrival for six hours.
Her footage of frustrated passengers yelling at officials was shared thousands of times back in her home country and when Ms Lar was due to leave Dubai after five days with her sister, she was detained.
UAE authorities had flagged her video and after she turned up at the airport to fly home to Joe in Nigeria, she was arrested, charged and sentenced for ‘breaching the privacy of government employees at Dubai airport’ and ‘sharing a video of them online without their consent‘.
‘I was really shocked. I didn’t commit murder, I didn’t steal… I posted a video of harassment of myself and my fellow countrymen,’ she told ITV.
British former prisoner Zara-Jayne Moisey, who was locked up after reporting her own rape, recalled the horrific conditions she was forced to live in at the filthy Al-Barsha prison.
Inmate Dinchi Lar (pictured left) was arrested after sharing a video of fellow Nigerian passengers who had been detained at Dubai Airport for hours. She was later arrested charged and sentenced for ‘breaching the privacy of government employees at Dubai airport’ and ‘sharing a video of them online without their consent’.
Dinchi Lar (pictured right) in Dubai the day before she was arrested and sent to the jail
‘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.’
Inmates have described both baking heat and freezing temperatures with ‘extreme’ air conditioning, with one saying: ‘If being in prison doesn’t break you, the temperature inside the prison will.’
Illness is also rife in the prisons, with one British former inmate suffering from tuberculosis which he contracted while in there.
Human rights campaigners say some with chronic health conditions were denied adequate medical care.
A report in 2019 found that HIV patients in al-Awir were refused life-saving treatment.
And in a damning probe by the European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights last month claimed guards were ‘scared’ of those with HIV and treated them ‘like wild and dangerous animals’.
A report in 2019 found that HIV patients in al-Awir were refused life-saving treatment. Pictured is the interior of the jail
HIV-positive Inmates are caged away in isolation, left without any access to libraries or prison amenities.
The cells were gripped by Covid during the pandemic as well, with cramped conditions making it impossible to social distance.
Illness is made worse by freezing temperatures and lack of nutrition, with pictures showing the grim food served to inmates.
Ms Lar said inmates in her jail were not seen by a doctor unless they were ‘at the point of death’.
Those who make it out of Dubai’s prisons are usually left scarred by their experiences.
Mr Williams told the Press Association following his release: ‘When I came home I found it very hard to adjust. I used to wake up in the middle of the night screaming and crying, not knowing why.
‘I had mood swings, it must have been hard for my family to be around me.’
He added: ‘I’m not sure why this happened to me. If I knew that I would have been able to avoid the situation.’
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‘.
Radha Stirling, founder of the pressure group, said: ‘He never imagined that he would be going to jail for a holiday romance with a girl who was a few months younger, but is now the same age.
‘It is just shocking. His life is being ruined. Here we have two British tourists who were on holiday in a consensual relationship and now one is going to jail.
The family of Marcus Fakana, from Tottenham, London, have been left devastated by his prison sentence, sources claimed
While the relationship would have been legal in the UK, under Dubai law a 17-year-old is defined as a child. The girl, from London, has since turned 18
Radha Stirling, founder of British-based aid group Detained In Dubai, slammed the government for not doing more to help the teen, branding the situation an ’embarrassment’ to Britain
‘Dubai likes to market itself as a glamorous party destination, one for influencers yet they are jailing a British tourist for a something that would not be a crime in his own country and ruining his life.’
Fakana has been prevented from leaving Dubai since his arrest in August.
Ms Sterling added: ‘I did expect the British Government, as other Governments have done, to step up and save one of their citizens from unjust sentencing.
‘Marcus did plead guilty, but police and prosecutors had a disturbing litany of details in his file which ended up making it more than a misdemeanour and heard in a higher court.
‘They said he was older than 19 and he was from Pakistan. He was a British citizen. There were a lot errors deliberately to torment him.’
Sterling said he now hoped the rule of Dubai could get involved as he has done in the past involving visitors who have fallen foul of their laws.
‘Had the British Government made the efforts Marcus’s case not hard to resolve and he would not have received the one year sentence,’ said Sterling.
Marcus is pictured with his family who have been battling to get the teenager released
The Mail on Sunday previously revealed that Foreign Secretary David Lammy (pictured) had finally acted on desperate pleas to aid Marcus – but the family say more needs to be done
Prime minster Keir Starmer has been slammed by a charity representing the teen
Marcus was arrested in August after the mother of the girl he had a secret romance 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. In the UK he would not have considered to have committed any crime.
Ms Stirling blasted the ‘unreasonable’ sentence and slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy for not doing enough to help the teen.
‘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 Labour government should be ashamed they have not secured the freedom of a teenage tourist. It wasn’t a difficult job.’
After his detention the teen’s distraught family appealed to the Foreign Secretary, who is also their local MP, as well as the ruler of Dubai to try and secure his release.
A spokesman for Foreign and Commonwealth Office last night MailOnline: ‘We are supporting a British man in the UAE and are in contact with his family.’