Denied charges: Rebecca Blake has been sentenced to three months in a Dubai jail for having sex in the back of a taxi after a 10 hour drinking binge..
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A British woman has been sentenced to three months in a Dubai jail followed by deportation for having drunken sex in the back of a taxi in the city.
Rebecca Blake, 29, had been arrested earlier this year after partially stripping off in the back of the cab after a 10-hour drinking binge.
Irishman Conor McRedmond, 28, with whom she was caught, was also convicted and received the same sentence, despite DNA tests to find evidence of intercourse coming back negative.
Accused: Rebecca Blake, 29, left, and Conor McRedmond, 28, right, denied having sex in the back of a Dubai taxi in May, but admitted to indulging in an all-day drinking binge.
Sentenced: Rebecca Blake, left, and Conor McRedmond, centre, walk with their lawyer Shaker al-Shammary outside the Dubai Courts.
Miss Blake wore a black dress to court with a brown blazer and kept her sunglasses on outside the building.
The pair have been released on bail pending an appeal hearing in January but will have to spend Christmas in Dubai because their passports have been taken away.
Recruitment consultant Blake, from Dorking in Surrey, was arrested on May 4 after first meeting McRedmond just hours earlier.
Their taxi driver alerted police after spotting Blake in his rearview mirror with her top off, straddling McRedmond and ‘making the sounds of a woman having sex’.
Jailed: Ms Blake (second right) and Mr McRedmond (left) chat with their lawyer Shaker Al Shammary (second left) and Ms Blake's sister Natasha Todd (far right) outside the Dubai Courts earlier this year.
Blake, who moved to Dubai in September last year to take up a £100,000-a-year-post at Manpower recruitment firm, had been at a drink-all-you-like £35-a-head brunch in the Rotana Hotel. She previously said: ‘They just kept filling up my glass. It’s all a blur.’
At 4pm, she moved on to the hotel bar and indulged in a happy hour until 6pm before continuing drinking at the Irish Village pub with McRedmond. Blake, who admitted having four vodka drinks and five glasses of wine, then caught a taxi at 10.30pm with McRedmond, from County Offaly, who had had ‘six or seven’ vodka drinks.
Pakistani taxi driver Qaiser Khan, 29, told the court in a statement the couple seemed confused and McRedmond swigged from a bottle.
He said: ‘I told him it was not allowed to have alcohol inside the taxi.
‘The next thing, I looked in the mirror and saw the woman sitting on the man’s thighs. She was naked, moving up and down and making sounds.’
Mr Khan said he pulled over, spotted a police patrol and called over Emirati officer Abdullah Obaid Khamis, 22, who said he found the pair still having sex.
Mr Khamis said: ‘The man’s shirt was open, his trousers were down to his knees and the woman was not wearing any underwear.’
Ms Blake, of Dorking, Surrey, left, wore a hjab to court earlier this year. She and Mr McRedmond from Tullamore, County Offaly, were arrested on May 4 after meeting for the first time earlier that day in a hotel bar.
Pakistani taxi driver Qaiser Khan, 29, said he picked the couple up at around 11pm after their all-day drinking binge, which had started with midday brunch and unlimited drinks.
Ms Blake, who moved to Dubai in September last year and worked for Manpower recruitment firm until she was sacked after the incident in May, has said: 'I'm no saint. The whole incident was a blur'.
The taxi driver claimed Blake offered him ‘a lot of money’ to tell prosecutors the pair were kissing rather than having sex but he refused.
The couple’s defence lawyer said there were gaping inconsistencies in the witness accounts. He also said the pair could not have been having sex because Blake was on her period at the time, adding: ‘This is Dubai, not a mosque. Everyone drinks.’
Neither witness gave evidence in the trial. Their statements were instead submitted to judges in the misdemeanours court.
Fired: A tearful Rebecca Blake has lost her job at recruitment firm.
Blake and McRedmond denied having consensual sex and indecency. They previously pleaded guilty to consuming alcohol and were fined £512.
Both said they could not comment.
They are the latest expats to fall foul of the United Arab Emirates’ strict laws preventing drunkenness in public and sex outside marriage.
In 2008, Vince Acors, 38, and Michelle Palmer, 40, were jailed for three months for having sex on a beach. The sentence was suspended on appeal.
And in 2009 Charlotte Adams and Ayman Najafi spent a month in jail after an Emirati woman complained they were kissing in public.
Strict Islamic state: Those convicted of having sex outside marriage face a sentence of between one month and three years under Dubai law.
Culled from The Daily Mail UK.
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