You can check into Dubai — but there’s a chance you won’t check out, at least not for a year or so.
R&B singer Trey Songz’s bodyguard Cornell Whitfield is the latest Western tourist to run afoul of the sharia-based judicial system in Dubai, one of the seven emirates that make up the federation of the United Arab Emirates.
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It’s a system critics say unfairly targets unwitting travelers, especially those perceived as having some money.
Miami native Whitfield, 40, who has acted as a bodyguard for many celebrities including Lil’ Kim, Dallas Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs and San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel, was sentenced to a year in prison last week for allegedly “slapping” a male fan who tried to reach out and touch Songz last March at a Dubai hotel.
Whitfield, the father of a young son, is just one in a long line of Westerners who’ve found themselves facing a nightmare of red tape, arrests and sometimes lengthy detention for what appear to be largely spurious claims.
Radha Stirling, who’s run the site Detained in Dubai since 2008, when she first helped a friend who was arrested in Dubai, has aided what she says have been “thousands” of tourists arrested on flimsy pretenses there.
Stirling told The Post that most Westerners are naive about what awaits them in Dubai.
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Foreigners, she said, are targeted by both Dubai residents and expats there who know they can go to the police and make an accusation, often with no evidence, and immediately get the cops and local prosecutors on their side.
The accusers often ask for large sums of money in exchange for dropping charges, she added. Many tourists opt to go to court, not realizing that judges almost automatically side with the accusers, even if they know the victims are being extorted.
“Whoever takes the first police complaint is usually favored in the outcome,” Stirling told The Post.
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“So if I’m the one who takes a complaint to the police station, I’m probably going to win that criminal case. Visitors think Dubai is this modern, luxurious place and they assume the justice system is like the West’s when it most definitely is not.”
