Eleven Ukrainian models face deportation for posing naked in a high-rise balcony photo shoot in Dubai.
Dubai police arrested and then detained at least 11 of the models taking part in a photoshoot together with a male Russian photographer. They slammed them with charges of public debauchery and producing pornography.
The Emirate operates a strict legal code based on Islamic law, or Shariah, which has sent many foreigners to jail for similar offences.
After an unusually speedy investigation, Dubai’s Attorney General Essam Issa al-Humaidan announced that those behind the photo shoot would be deported to their home countries, without elaborating further.
Dubai police have declined to officially identify those detained. More than a dozen women appeared in the widely shared video – with some named by Russian media.
One woman outed by local media, Marianna Fedchuk, 21, admitted to being in a clothed picture including many women who subsequently stripped for the naked shoot – but denied being one of the women on the balcony.
She said she flew back to Kyiv before the photo was taken and urged her followers to follow her x-rated social media pages ‘more closely, so you can at least distinguish naked me from the other naked girls’.
Meanwhile, trained lawyer Yana Graboshchuk, 27, was revealed to be among the group detained for the revealing shoot – as her family said they knew where she had flown but had no idea what her purpose was.
Ukrainian and Russian authorities confirmed the arrest of their citizens Tuesday, but the nationalities of the others detained were not immediately known.
The swift deportation is rare for the legal system in Dubai. Such cases typically go to trial or are otherwise adjudicated before deportation.
Dubai is a top destination for the world’s Instagram influencers and models, who fill their social media feeds with slick bikini-clad selfies from the coastal Emirate’s luxury hotels and artificial islands.
But the city’s brand as a glitzy foreign tourist destination has at times provoked controversy and collided with the sheikhdom’s strict rules governing public behavior and expression.
The nude photo shoot scandal came 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.
