The mother of an Irish air stewardess in custody in Dubai for trying to take her own life after allegedly suffering domestic abuse at the hands of her husband said she is ‘desperate to get home’ and has been through ‘the worst time of her life’.
Tori Towey, 28, has been banned from leaving the UAE and told she faces jail for drinking alcohol and attempting to take her own life following an alleged beating by her husband.
Irish premier Simon Harris has said he will work to intervene in the ‘appalling’ case, while Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald raised Ms Towey’s case in the Irish Parliament on Tuesday afternoon.
Tori’s mum Caroline told MailOnline: ‘The support from the Irish government and the Irish people has been incredible and we weren’t expecting it at all. It’s a small country and the politicians are real people.
‘We are both exhausted and desperate to get home. Thank you so much to everyone supporting us.’
She added that her daughter had been through ‘the worst time of her life and needs to come home with me and heal’.
Caroline later said the ‘victim support’ unit with Dubai police have made contact to offer their support and the police have also offered the services of a lawyer – raising hopes that a travel ban and any possible charged could be dropped within days.
Tori Towey has been left stranded in Dubai after being faced with an attempted suicide charge
Tori was pictured with extensive bruises over her body, which she says are from an assault
Tori, pictured left with aunt, has been banned from leaving the UAE and told she faces jail for drinking alcohol and attempting to take her own life
Tori’s aunt Ann Flynn also told Sky News: ‘She’s doing her best. It’s very stressful, stressful for all the family.
‘Tori’s a beautiful young woman, fun-loving, loves to travel. She got the job of her dreams working for Emirates, and she could continue travelling with work.’
Speaking to Irish broadcaster RTE, Ms Flynn said: ‘I don’t know will this court case go ahead, or if it does what will happen? We’re just very hopeful.
‘It’s really terrible that this has happened to a young woman who was full of life and full of adventure.’
A spokesperson for legal group Detained in Dubai (DiD) claimed Tori’s South African husband went after her with a knife and punched her, before slamming her arm in the bathroom door trying to break it.
Tori said she tried to take her own life after the attack, which left her with severe bruises and injuries.
But after being taken to a police station, Ms Towey is now facing charges of alcohol consumption and attempting suicide by a court in Dubai.
She said she is unable to leave the country as her passport was blocked, meaning she can’t travel back home to Ireland.
Speaking through outreach group DiD, who are assisting the family, Ms Towey said: ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen in court next week.
‘I’m desperate to go home to Ireland and put all of this in the past. I’m asking the Taoiseach to please help us.’
The DiD has said Ms Towey could face a lengthy prison sentence in a jail known for ‘human rights abuses and torture’.
Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai, said: ‘We are calling on Dubai authorities to urgently drop the charges against Tori, remove the travel ban and let her fly home to Ireland with her mother. She has been charged with attempted suicide and alcohol consumption.
‘Strangely, the UAE has gone to great public relations efforts to promote alcohol as legal in the country. In reality, people are still regularly charged with alcohol consumption and possession. Tori’s experience is nothing short of tragic and quite frankly, she is lucky to be alive.’
She explained: ‘Tori arranged to fly home to Ireland but, when she arrived at the airport, was told a case against her by her husband had been dropped but the travel ban remained.
‘She attended the police station who assured her the travel ban would be lifted but it never happened. The next day, Tori and her husband had some wine and he became enraged, accusing her of having an affair.’
Ms Towey then attempted to take her own life and ended up in a police station.
Ms Stirling explained: ‘The next thing she remembers is an ambulance crew and police waking her up. She was taken to Al Barsha police station and kept for several hours before going home again.
‘Her mother pleaded to the Irish Consulate but in the absence of their assistance, boarded a flight to Dubai. When she arrived, she wasn’t allowed to see Tori alone, her abuser wouldn’t allow it.
‘The three met at Emirates mall then attended the prosecutor’s office to find out what charges had been registered against her.’
Ms Towey, who graduated from the Dublin Institute Of Technology, moved to the UAE in April 2023
Tori is pictured in 2021, before her move to the UAE – where she now hopes to return to Ireland
Irish premier Simon Harris has said he will work to intervene in the ‘appalling’ case, while Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald raised Ms Towey’s case in the Irish Parliament on Tuesday afternoon.
Mr Harris thanked Ms McDonald for bringing the case to his attention, saying: ‘I’m not directly appraised of the situation, but I’m very happy to be directly appraised of it now.’
He said he would work with the deputy ‘to intervene and see how we can support an Irish citizen in what sounds to be – based on what you tell me – the most appalling circumstances’.
The Department of Foreign Affairs told the Irish Daily Mail it was aware of the case and was offering consular assistance.
Ms McDonald told Dail Eireann that Ms Towey has been the victim of domestic violence and is subject to a travel ban over alleged charges.
She said she has spoken to Ms Towey, and that the 28-year-old’s mother has travelled to Dubai to be with her.
‘Tori wants to come home, simple as that. She is a Roscommon woman and she wants to come home,’ she said.
‘I am asking now, as a matter of absolute urgency, that we have a statement from this House, that you intervene Taoiseach, that the ambassador is called and that it is made absolutely plain to the authorities of Dubai that no woman should be treated in this way, and an Irish citizen, an Irish woman will not be treated in this way.’
Radha Stirling, CEO of DiD says Tori’s husband attacked her with a knife and punched her, before slamming her arm in the bathroom door trying to break it. Pictured the injuries said to be from the alleged attack
The 28-year-old moved to the UAE in April 2023 when she was offered a job as a flight attendant with Emirates
Mr Harris responded saying he was not aware of Ms Towey’s case, and thanked Ms McDonald for bringing it to his attention and that of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin.
He pledged to work ‘to intervene and see how we can support an Irish citizen in what sounds to be, based on what you tell me, the most appalling circumstances’.
The Department of Foreign Affairs told the Irish Daily Mail it was aware of the case and was offering consular assistance.
Talking to Sky News, Tori’s aunt Ann Flynn said: ‘She’s doing her best.’ She added: ‘It’s very stressful, it’s stressful for all the family.’
She described her niece as ‘a beautiful young woman’ who is ‘fun-loving and loved to travel’.
Ms Flynn said: ‘She got the job of her dreams working for Emirates, and she could continue travelling with work.
‘She loved Dubai, and had a good network of friends there.’
The airline hostess has been told ‘nothing could be done’ and that the case will be going to court on July 18.
In 2018, one member of Dubai Police said that they would focus on treatment rather than punishment when it came to suicide victims, even thought suicide and suicide attempts are a crime in the country.
Brig Ahmed bin Ghalaita, then director of Al Refaa Police Station, told The National: ‘The move is taken to provide support to suicide attempters and deal with them as victims who need moral support and help.
‘Suicide cases are being examined by a police unit and experts in the psychology field to identify the causes behind their attempts and find solutions for them.’
It comes as earlier this year, British wives boasting of luxury new lives funded by millionaire husbands in Dubai have been warned they risk being dumped homeless on the streets at any moment.
Experts have revealed a surge in complaints from not only women but also men betrayed and dumped by wealthy partners after upping sticks for the Middle East.
The alert comes amid a TikTok and Instagram trend of UK women sharing footage of spending sprees in the United Arab Emirates after wedding wealthy husbands.
Mail Online had also reported on an influx of expats pampered by rich partners, enjoying days filled with shopping trips, extravagant meals and property upgrades.
Yet there is a ‘dark side’ to Dubai that many women only discover too late, according to Manchester-based Aramas International Lawyers’ Samara Iqbal.
She told of being inundated with calls for help from not only women but also men wanting protection amid fears they have been – or could be – exploited by a partner promising an alluring new lifestyle in the Middle East.
And she has issued a hitlist of warning signs for anyone feeling tempted – while also highlighting a new civil court in neighbouring Abu Dhabi which could offer more help to women stranded overseas and yet which remains little-known to many.
Ms Iqbal’s firm is based in Manchester but a surge in cases has seen new branches open in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
She too is a watcher of TikTok videos promoting what seem to be aspirational lives in the Middle East – but is now warning women to beware of hidden dangers.
She outlined how many women find out only too late their husband might have as many as three other wives – and that while handing over upmarket clothes, cards and credit cards, everything remains documented in only his name.
Ms Iqbal told Mail Online: ‘We’ve got lots of British women who are attracted by these promises of a luxurious lifestyle, even though their own families aren’t happy about it – and not realising he can cut her off at any moment.
‘People are literally being dumped on the street. It looks nice, but there’s a dark side to Dubai – it can be very scary out there if you find yourself in this position and don’t know what your legal rights are.’
Her firm is increasingly being approached for advice on potential pre-nuptial and also post-nuptial agreements as more and more women feel tempted by marriages to someone they’ve met here before moving together overseas.
She said: ‘We often deal with cases more and more on a daily basis in which lots of women have married and moved out to the UAE only to be left stranded without any source of money and essentially being ‘cut off’ by their rich partners.
‘While these partners may be providing and funding their luxurious lifestyles – cars, designer items, expensive jewellery, holidays, meals out – none of this actually belongs to these women and there is nothing in their name. It’s all in their partners name.
‘Women are thrown out of marital homes as they do not belong to them – credit cards cut off and they have no recourse to any of the possessions, houses, companies and assets the partner has solely in his own name.
‘These assets come under Sharia law and belongs to the person whose name its registered to and she would not be entitled to any of it if her name is not registered.’
Potential husbands might swoop in during university days together, drinking and nightclubbing in a way they would no longer do when back in the UAE, she suggests.
Women are not the only ones at risk, according to Ms Iqbal – she described being asked for advice by men serenaded in London and promised a better life abroad but worried they could be abandoned or blackmailed over their sexuality.
In the past year a new civil court in Abu Dhabi has been opened which does recognise British civil orders and tends to look more favourably on UK wives wanting a settlement or at least joint custody of any children.
Yet too many people still remain unaware it exists, Ms Iqbal said.
Ms Towey’s horrific story is not the first time Brits and Irish citizens in Dubai have been slammed with unfair charges.
Radha Stirling – the founder of Detained in Duabi – was inspired to start up the organisation after in 2008 hearing that a colleague called Cat Le-Huy had been arrested by immigration officials in the nation.
At first, she assumed it was all a big mistake. Her friend, a London-based producer with whom she worked at the TV production company Endemol, had been initially detained because an unidentified bottle of pills was found in his suitcase.
After they turned out to be melatonin, a perfectly legal jetlag medication, customs staff announced with a flourish that they had also discovered cannabis among some dust in the depths of the holidaymaker’s bag.
The quantity of this illegal narcotic was, they claimed, exactly 0.03 grams. That’s an amount smaller than a single grain of salt and virtually invisible to the human eye.
Cat, who hails from Belsize Park, North London, was promptly slapped in handcuffs and transported to the Al Wathba prison, 40 miles north of the airport.
Radha knew that her friend did not take recreational drugs so, initially, thought he would be promptly released. But she was wrong. Instead, she was told to her horror that he faced a four-year prison sentence for ‘drug possession’.
In the weeks that followed, she helped organise a noisy campaign on Cat’s behalf, turning him into an international cause célèbre.
Finally, after the best part of a month in custody, he was released without charge and allowed to return home.
As the dust settled, Radha was contacted by several other Westerners who claimed to be victims of grave miscarriages of justice in the tourist hotspot.
‘People were basically saying, ‘I saw how you helped him, can you help me, too?’ she said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
‘I suddenly realised that, behind the facade of this glamorous country, which touts its credentials as a popular destination with beaches and luxury hotels, there were huge problems with the rule of law and human rights, affecting vast numbers of innocent people.’
She duly founded Detained In Dubai, a pressure group that lobbies on behalf of victims of the Emirate state’s hardline laws.
As of 2021, her organisation had helped an incredible 15,000 people — an average of roughly three per day — navigate a draconian legal system.
‘We have dealt with cases in which rape victims were prosecuted for unlawful sex, foreigners jailed over social media posts, people convicted on the basis of torture and forced confessions, and victims of gross police and prosecutorial misconduct of a variety that staggers the imagination,’ she revealed.
‘All involve laws that people don’t imagine could possibly exist in the modern era.’
Among the victims Radha has personally helped is Princess Latifa al-Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai’s autocratic ruler Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum, who attempted to flee the country in a yacht in 2018.
The princess was under armed guard, in 2021 sharing videos telling how she had been seized by commandos while in international waters, before being transported back to Dubai, where she had claimed to have been held hostage ever since.
‘I spoke to Princess Latifa when she was on the boat and shots were going off,’ Radha said. ‘It was extremely harrowing. When even a member of the royal family is denied basic human rights, you can imagine how the country treats normal people who aren’t even its citizens.’
However, in 2022 the Princess Latifa said she is ‘living as she wishes’ a year after claiming she was being held against her will by her father.
These and other high-profile cases shine a light on the dark underbelly of a destination whose status as a celebrity hotspot is deeply at odds with its legal system, under which everything from drinking alcohol to holding hands in public and sharing a bedroom with someone who is not your spouse is officially unlawful, and consensual gay sex can earn you a prison sentence of ten years.
Among the victims Radha has personally helped is Princess Latifa al-Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai’s autocratic ruler. The princess was under armed guard, in 2021 sharing videos (pictured) telling how she had been seized by commandos while in international waters, before being transported back to Dubai, where she had claimed to have been held hostage ever since
Almost any visitor is also at constant risk of prosecution under strict cyber-crime laws.
Should they or any other foreigner fall foul of a policeman, minor royal, business leader or powerful local, the country’s authorities can (and often do) trawl through historic social media posts.
‘These rules can, in theory, criminalise almost every Western visitor,’ says Radha. ‘If you’re responsible for a Facebook post from five years ago they don’t like, and if they want to go for you, then you are toast.’
One example was Briton Laleh Shahravesh, who was arrested in Dubai in 2019 following a complaint from a local that she had used the social network to brand her ex-husband’s new partner ‘horse-face’. She was arrested on arrival in the country and only allowed back to the UK several weeks later, after agreeing to pay a £625 fine for making the supposedly ‘defamatory’ claim.
Elsewhere Scott Richards, a 42-year-old father of two, was detained in 2016 after the police took exception to a Facebook post in which he had shared a link to a crowd-funding campaign to supply blankets for Afghan refugees.
He spent three weeks behind bars because of a law that bans soliciting donations for non-profits that have not been approved by the government’s ‘Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities’ department.
In 2021, Detained In Dubai was also representing a 31-year-old HR manager from Gloucestershire arrested at the airport as she tried to return home after three years living in the country.
Her alleged ‘crime’ is having told her ex-flatmate to ‘f*** off’ in a WhatsApp message, during a row over the use of the dining table at their home during lockdown. This is also, apparently, defamatory.
For years, Sheikh Maktoum (pictured in 2019) has often intervened when ugly legal cases threaten his country’s international reputation
It is women’s rights that are most commonly abused. A 2005 law states that ‘a husband’s rights over his wife’ include the wife’s ‘courteous obedience to him’, and places conditions on a married woman’s right to work or leave the house.
These rules are routinely used by estranged husbands to exert control over their spouses, even when both parties are Western expats.
Radha says: ‘We had one client, a German woman in the process of separating from her husband, who had decided to get a job. Her husband rang up the company and said, ‘I didn’t give her permission’ and they had to fire her.’
In Dubai, extra-marital sex is punishable by one year or more in prison. On the basis of this law, Amnesty says, a Swedish-run hospital in Ajman Emirate was forced to report pregnant, unmarried women to the police.
Three years ago, a 29-year-old South African resident of Dubai called Emlyn Culverwell took his fiancée, Iryna Nohal, a Ukrainian, to a doctor, complaining of stomach pain.
He promptly diagnosed that she was pregnant. But rather than offering treatment, the doctor called the police. The couple were arrested and jailed when they could not produce a marriage license.
Eventually, they were released, apparently at the behest of Sheikh Maktoum. For years, he often intervened when ugly legal cases threaten his country’s international reputation.
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