Women arrested for viral naked Dubai photo shoot to be deported
Dubai will deport the 11 Ukrainian women who were arrested for public debauchery after they turned heads in the emirate by posing nude on a high-rise balcony in a stunt that quickly went viral, according to reports.
Authorities in the United Arab Emirates detained the cheeky women along with a male Russian photographer on charges of public debauchery and producing pornography.
Images of the public display of nudity made waves across social media and shocked sensibilities throughout the sheikhdom, where a legal code based on Islamic law, or Shariah, has landed foreigners in the slammer for lesser offenses.
Dubai’s Attorney General Essam Issa al-Humaidan on Tuesday announced that those behind the controversial photoshoot would be sent back to their countries, without elaborating further.
Dubai police have declined to name those detained, but one has been identified by the US Sun as Yana Graboshchuk, a 27-year-old model from Ukraine who was caught thanks to a distinctive tattoo on her butt that matches her social media images.
The green-eyed brunette stunner’s family said they thought she was on a holiday and expressed shock that she was involved in the headline-grabbing incident.
“She went on holiday, and then I don’t know what came next,” Graboshchuk’s brother Taras, 20, told the news outlet. “Yes, she had planned a photoshoot there … But I had no more information about it.”
The rapid action announced by the attorney general is rare for the legal system in Dubai, where such cases typically go to trial or are otherwise adjudicated before deportation.
“The public prosecutor ordered the deportation of the accused for their behavior contrary to public morals,” al-Humaidan said, adding that the women had been charged with violating the public decency law.
The scandal arose just days before Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar, and as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed in nearby Doha, Qatar, for an official state visit.
Dubai has increasingly promoted itself as a popular destination for Russians on holiday.
The generally pro-Kremlin newspaper Life identified the Russian man arrested as the head of an information technology company, though the firm denied he had anything to do with the incident.
Stanislav Voskresensky, the governor of the Ivanovo region where the company is based, asked the Russian Foreign Ministry and Russia’s ambassador to the UAE to offer the man their support.
“We don’t abandon our own,” Voskresensky wrote on social media.
Although the UAE has made legal changes to attract tourists and investors, allowing unmarried couples to share hotel rooms and residents to drink alcohol without a license, the country’s justice system carries severe penalties for violations of the public decency law.
The penalty for the rap the group faced is up to six months behind bars and a fine of nearly $1,500.
With Post wires
