Jon Henley in Paris Saturday January 4, 2003 The Guardian

Police in Dubai have rejected a French businesswoman's allegation that she was gang raped by three local men, and instead charged her with having "adulterous sexual relations", a crime which carries a maximum 18-month jail sentence under the Muslim emirate's Sharia law.

The French foreign ministry confirmed yesterday that Touria Tiouli, a Moroccan-born marketing executive who grew up in Limoges and holds full French nationality, had been freed from prison on bail paid by the French consulate but was due to face trial within the next few weeks.

"We have managed to find her a lawyer and she will at least be properly defended," a ministry spokesman said. "It is a very delicate situation. We are doing what we can, but we cannot make too much noise for fear of upsetting religious sensibilities over there."

Ms Tiouli, who works for several French luxury goods firms and was on her third extended business trip to Dubai, went to the oil-rich emirate's police on October 14, the day after her 39th birthday. She said three men had taken it in turns to rape her the previous night.

Ms Tiouli said she had gone to celebrate her birthday at a popular international disco. She knew the place well and was on good terms with its manager, who introduced her to three friends of his.

They brought her a drink - Coca-Cola, according to friends from Limoges who have formed a support group for her - and then drifted off. At midnight, when Ms Tiouli went to call a taxi to go home, they offered her a lift.

"She didn't think twice," said one friend, Brigitte Rodde-Schmitt. "These men were friends of the manager, people she felt she could trust."

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2003

Answers

But the men took her to an outlying district and raped her for several hours before finally dropping her at her hotel, Ms Tiouli says. She has told friends she thought hard about going to the police, aware that her story might not be believed, but she decided to do so because she thought her status as a French citizen with close links to the consulate's business section would carry some weight.

"I very soon realised my story was not getting through to the police at all," she told the French daily Libération.

"The next day they called me back in for more questioning, put me in handcuffs and took me to Dubai women's prison where I spent five days. They had questioned two of my rapists, and decided I was the guilty party."

The men had told the police that they saw Ms Tiouli drinking alcohol and thought she was a prostitute. One admitted having consensual sex with her - meaning that she could be charged with both adultery and making a false accusation of rape. Consular officials have said unofficially that the third man, who has not so far been questioned, is the son of a well-respected Dubai family.

Under Sharia law in Nigeria, a woman found guilty of adultery can be punished by stoning to death. Dubai normally makes do with a six-month prison sentence.

A spokesman for the Union of French Citizens Abroad said: "While she is French, she will be seen there as Moroccan and Muslim. In the United Arab Emirates, North Africans are really the lowest of the low."

A spokesman at the UAE embassy in Paris said Ms Tiouli, who is divorced and has a 14-year-old son in France, had been charged "under laws on sex outside marriage that are extremely common throughout the Arab world", and insisted she would be given a fair trial.

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2003

But a foreign ministry source said privately that France was worried that she might be made an example of.

"The last such case was in 1995, when a Filipino maid killed her employer because he tried to rape her," the source said. "Several leading French personalities intervened publicly, and diplomatic relations between France and the Emirates became extremely stormy."

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2003