Couple who face jail in Dubai for a public kiss

TWO Britons were trapped in Dubai yesterday after being told they could face prison for kissing in public.

Ayman Najafi will clear his name Ayman Najafi ‘will clear his name’

Pretty blonde tourist Charlotte Adams, 25, and marketing executive Ayman Najafi, 24, were handed a one-month sentence after a local woman alleged they had locked lips in a burger bar.

The couple denied the accusation and appealed against their conviction, vowing to clear their names.

Yesterday, Miss Adams pleaded for clemency from the hardline state’s appeal court and said: “I only kissed him on the cheek and I was drunk.”

The court’s judge ordered the couple to stay in the Emirate state and said he would deliver his judgment on April 4.

Mr Najafi, from Palmers Green, north London, who is working for marketing firm Hay Group in Dubai, and Miss Adams, a tourist, were arrested while with friends at Bob’s Easy Diner restaurant in the upmarket Jumeirah Beach Residence last November.

A fellow diner with her young children reported them to police for kissing on the mouth and touching each other.

They were convicted of committing a sexual act in January after the unnamed 38-year-old woman told the Dubai court her young daughter saw the couple were kissing first, then she saw them do it herself.

The pair were sentenced to one month in prison followed by deportation and fined £180 after admitting drinking alcohol.

They immediately appealed and were released on bail but have been stuck in the Middle-Eastern state ever since after their passports were taken away.

Miss Adams’s friend Jade Williams, who she was staying with in Dubai, said her pal had been “caught up in a huge misunderstanding”.

“Charlotte is not at all disrespectful of Dubai’s laws and fully understands their culture,” she said. “Charlotte is completely innocent.”

Yesterday Mr Najafi said: “I am just focusing on my appeal. I am going to clear my name. I respect the culture and laws out here and have never been in trouble with the law either in Dubai or the UK.”

Their lawyer in Dubai, Khalaf Al-Hasani, said their defence was that they kissed on the cheek “as a greeting” which does not fall foul of the country’s strict morality laws.

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