AUSTRALIA--A Queensland woman spent eight months in a United Arab Emirates jail for adultery after complaining to police about being drugged and raped by co-workers.
Alicia Gali, 29, yesterday detailed her harrowing ordeal after filing a Queensland lawsuit against the five-star international resort where the attack allegedly took place in 2008.
Warning other women against going to the UAE, Ms Gali said she endured eight months in a crowded prison room with up to 30 other women after she complained to authorities of being raped.
"These countries don't have the same laws as us. You can end up in serious trouble," she said.
Apart from her family, no one in Australia knew Ms Gali had been jailed for adultery and illegal drinking, because Australian embassy staff advised her and her family not to go to the media.
"It was just traumatising," she said.
"Everything that happened was the worst thing that somebody could go through."
"You're just totally alone in a foreign country, with no assistance from your employer or the embassy."
Ms Gali, a salon manager at the resort, said she had been in the staff bar, where she was told she could legally drink, when another employee put ice in her drink.
She said it was the last thing she remembered before waking the next day in her room with painful injuries.
"I didn't know what had happened. I was traumatised, I felt ill. I didn't even remember getting there or what had happened," Ms Gali said.
She said it was only when she took herself to hospital did she realise she had been sexually assaulted.
Later she learned she had been heard screaming and security guards had found men hiding in her room, where she was naked and unconscious.
When she was discharged from hospital she was asked to go to a police station to make a statement and then speak in front of a judge.
"I realised when I was put in a police car that I was being taken to jail."
Ms Gali said she was never warned by her UAE employers that she could be charged with adultery and face prison if she complained of being raped, without having four adult male Muslim witnesses.
"I didn't even know what the charges were until five months into my sentence," Ms Gali said.
Three of the men Ms Gali claimed sexually abused her were jailed, but for adultery and not rape. (Read more.)
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Alicia Gali: Imprisoned for Being Raped in a Muslim Country
And yet it's racist, bigoted, and Islamophobic for us not to want the same barbaric rules here in the West.
16 comments:
I've never understood why anyone, specifically a woman, would choose to go to Muslim country. Clearly she was not informed of the status of women in Islam, which brings home to me the importance of this site and others that reveal the truth. And I'm reading this story as Soledad O'Brien is doing a "hard hitting" show on "Islamophobia." She should be doing a story on THIS. So much for the media doing its job :(
Women need to quit committing the crime of getting raped in Muslim countries. How many times do women have to be punished for getting raped before they will learn that it is a crime punishable by death according to the law of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate?
yess brother david its reality
you are doing a great job God Bless u Raheel from pakistan
Women need to be informed of the risks when going to a Muslim country. They are very serious and I would not go because it is just too dangerous.
Since our standard media, even Fox News, doesn't report on these things, instead preaching the goodness of 'moderate Muslims' and the need for universal 'tolerance', should it be so surprising that too few are aware of the nature of Islam?
WomenforTruh (Lies)? Hummm? Whate habe you to sai? Hummm?
Fernado said...
WomenforTruh (Lies)? Hummm? Whate habe you to sai? Hummm?
She would probably say something like
"I have thousands of articles on my blog detailing priests who rape children...A woman is raped in America every 15 seconds....The Crusaders raped woman during the crusades..." etc...
Also I'm sure she would bring up something about Jews, because a Muslim can not refute Christians with out bringing up Jews.
I hope Alicia sues the pants off them. This is just more evidence of the denigration of women that is common place in Muslim countries. Sharia Law is completely outdated and is and will continue to be totally unacceptable to non Muslims. Stoning people to death just shows how Neanderthal this religion is.
Hello. I must tell you a very important story which concerns the American citizens who are inclined to travel in order to get away from things. I would like to say something about this, in order to spread the word around so maybe the parents, relatives, friends, will eventually find out what happened to the victims. Please advise people not to travel to Europe, especially if they are women ranging from 18 to 40 years old. I saw many cases of women abduction in Spain, a lot of them were then taken some place and sexually abused and beaten. In two weeks I saw 6 or 7 of such cases, in one case I even witnessed her being murdered by three gunshots because she didn't believe in allah(some were muslims).The perpetrators are many nationalities, mostly Romanian, Portuguese, Albanians, and Spanish. But in other countries of Europe is the same degree of danger for Americans or Canadians who are travelling there(women especially).
The first case I encountered was taken to a place near Barcelona's docks, a place for homeless people(named "Albergue", and these are in most cities of Spain). The second victim was last seen by me on Barcelona's beach and taken somewhere else in Barcelona, in an apartment owned by some nightclub doorkeeper. That Nightclub is situated between the beach of Barcelona and "Hotel del Mar". The third victim was held captive in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Barcelona, which is near the mountains. A part of it is steep, and there is also a large, tall building nearby(the talles in Barcelona). These were all beautiful women, ranging from 18 to 30 years old. Farther away, in Madrid, in a homeless shelter, named "San Isidro", there was yet another American girl held captive by the shelter's residents. The man who tricked her to come there or took her by force(maybe both) and was the leader of this scheme, he was a Romanian, some 30 years old or a bit older. A fat guy with a beard. One of the shelter residents had AIDS! A young guy, about 30. I don't know if he was raping her as well, but I think so. I cannot describe in more vivid detail how the victims are treated, because it is too appalling. Yet another case of abduction in the Barcelona bus station "Barcelona Nord", a station for inter-city bus travel.
A Canadian this time, she was asking around in the park near the station, how she can get to the airport because something happened- she had a fight with her friend there, and wanted to leave Spain and back to Canada. As she was asking, some Albanians spotted her and after she asked them where is the airport, they surrounded her and took her forcibly at gunpoint into their car, whilst she screamed. Her screams could be heard 50 meters away in all directions. The police there, which were parked in front of the park, stood quiet, not doing anything about it. There were a dozen police cars there. That was the last time she was seen. Her friend(a girl) from Spain, realized what has happened to her Canadian friend,and, after she had been crying in that park for 30 minutes, suddenly she felt ill and was taken by an ambulance(she could not bear the guilt). Now back to Madrid, to yet another case of an American girl being abducted, abused, and killed, then buried inside the desert wilderness near Madrid during one night, after she had been every day, for many days, repeatedly sexually abused by the owner of that villa outside of Madrid, his house residents(women) and his friends. She was beaten too, many times by his guests.
The man owner of that villa is a Portuguese man named Hannibal, or maybe it's just his nickname, I do not know. Anyway, I had been there in "Gesmo Alto" for two days, working for a man named Albaro, at his humble residence, situated right across the narrow street from the villa. "Gesmo Alto" is some fifty miles outside of Madrid, on the highway between Madrid and Valencia, past the small town of Chinchon, somewhere to the right of the highway. You turn right on a narrow dirt road and drive a bit until you see a sign "Gesmo Alto". That is the name of the small village I was in. So, some perpetrators were Romanians, others Arabic, different nationalities. Romanians are found in many of these cases, as they are spread over Europe quite a bit, along with other migrating peoples, like the Albanians. She was beaten by them, and sexually abused, and one of them, a Romanian, I heard him say that he liked "The Americana" more than the Romanian one, as in raping her, that is.. There was a Romanian girl too held captive there, yes. In fact, that is what gave them away, because the Romanian girl screamed a lot, whilst the American girl laid quiet, in a quiet dignity so to speak. But one night, the second night I slept at Albaro's house, as I was laying in bed, like the night before, over-hearing them talk, I heard one of the women of the household say to one of the men outside, that the American girl said she doesn't believe in allah, she believes in Jesus. Then, this young man took out his pistol and went inside the villa into the room where she was being held captive and put three bullets in her body.
The American girl had died..one of the romanians, seeing this, had this to say : "So what? I shit on her". After a few minutes one of them puts her dead body into the trunk of a car and drives off into the desert wasteland to bury her. Note : I was sleeping in an improvised shack, outside of Albaro's trailer. That shack wasn't properly finished at the roof, so I could hear perfectly what they were talking about outside. They only gathered in front of the villa during nights, to have a chat, but they weren't seen doing this in day time. So this is the end of the story, and of the stories of so many others, as it seems. I went to the local police, in Madrid, but one of them started saying that she was a whore and deserved to be dead(a "puta", in his own language). The others, they went along with me to show them the villa, they entered it, they had a chat with the household, and when they came back out, they were completely changed. They told me to be quiet, because the "Americana" is okay, and I only heard firecrackers, not gunshots. They took me with them after, to eat at a local restaurant in Chinchon. They ate using the money from the bribe, the Portuguese had bribed them, and this is why they were telling me to be quiet-"But you have to be quiet, because the Americana is alive, okay? You only heard firecrackers". I almost got killed too, but I tricked them to take me to the romanian consulate and the women there took me inside the consulate in order to send me home.
I'm sorry but this story is very one-sided and we are not getting all the facts. There are thousands of white, American/British/Aussie women (including myself) who have lived in the UAE without a single problem. The key is to conduct yourself properly and OBEY THE LAW. It's a no-brainer.
The UAE is not Iran or Afghanistan. They are very moderate. They do not stone people. Christians are allowed to worship there and they even allow public "Muslim-Christian Dialogues". You can find them on YouTube. Some of the Sheikhs have even sent their children to Catholic schools. However, sex outside of marriage is illegal there and they have the right to enforce their laws. As a Christian, I do not see the problem with this.
There are many things about this woman's story that sound very suspicious. She worked in a busy resort that is frequented by Westerners and other foreign tourists. She claims that she was drugged at the bar. Wouldn't an unconscious woman being carried through a hotel by 3 men arouse suspicion? Furthermore, other news agencies are reporting that this woman was jailed because she signed a confession that she committed adultery with married men (who were identified as Indian nationals). If she was raped, why would she admit to committing adultery? If she was raped, why didn't the Australian Embassy step in and assist her? If she was raped, why would the Embassy have told her not to go to the media? And most of all, why would she wait 4 years to file a lawsuit? This story is just not adding up. In the meantime, let's not rush to judgement when we do not have all the facts.
I like the internet, but there is a downside to it. And that would be that any idiot can post whatever they want, posing it as truth, without doing any research or fact checking. I live in the UAE with my wife and daughters. It is an incredibly safe country that is very modern. I know what they do to actual rapists because I read about it in the paper. In the United States, we consider people to be innocent until proven guilty. I find it hypocritical that so many people won't pass that same thing on to those who are alleged to have committed crimes in Muslim nations. The UAE has a court system. It works pretty well. I'd say better than the US court system in a lot of ways. This story from this woman is so full of holes it's unbelievable. What's really unbelievable is that there are so many morons out there that will just swallow it whole. This story is all over the internet. If it really happened, then why not name the people who did this to her. Why not name their nationalities. Foregin embassies always go to bat for their citizens if there is something unjust being done to them. The truth is, that most likely the sex was consensual. And after a night of drinking and sobering up, regret set in. When the facts came out, and the confessions came to light, the court most likely saw it as consensual sex out of marriage where alcohol was involved. That would explain the short 8 month jail sentences for everybody. Or maybe it's just easier to blame the Muslim world for this supposedly tragedy while reading one side of the story.
In response to Samantha Smith's ignorant comments... I say ignorant as I have just come across Alicia Gali's story, and it is clear that she did not do something wrong. Her bathroom was flooded, she needed to leave her apartment so she went to the staff bar, an employer she was somewhat familiar with brought over some ice, which he obviously slipped some drug into, as she blacked out. If she passed out in the bar, the men who raped her could have easily just said that she fainted and were helping her. Alicia clearly stated that the statement she was asked to sign at the court was in Arabic so she didn't know what it said, and was told she HAD TO sign it! It's disgusting that Samantha Smith could make such insensitive comments!
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