Well, I suppose it’s a happy ending of sorts. Unlike Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, Marte Deborah Dalelv is free to go home.
The fact that this incident even happened, though, says something horrible about Dubai and, in fact, a large part of the Muslim world. (I don’t think this would have happened in Indonesia or Turkey, but I could easily picture it in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, for example).
Dubai – a Paradise for the Rich and Misogynistic
Dalelv is a Norwegian who was in Dubai on business when she was raped. As you would expect a woman to do under those circumstances, she went to the police. That was a mistake. The police arrested her for having sex outside of marriage and consumption of alcohol. She was sentenced to 16 months in prison. The rapist, a Sudanese man, got 13 months.
Dubai may have luxury hotels and swimming pools, amazing skyscrapers and the occasional world class tennis tournament, but apparently they are still illiterate tribal savages at heart, and not the nice kind of illiterate tribal savages, either.
She got a pardon. Not an apology. She got a pardon after the Sheikh of Dubai realized that pretty close to 100% of people throughout the modern world, that world that Dubai would like to be a part of, thought that this was a sign of barbarism.
The law is still on the books, and there’s no guarantee they won’t pull this crap again. They probably pull it on their own women all the damned time.
To add insult to insult, the pardon also applies to her rapist.
www.gurukalehuru.com 