Human trafficking cases in Dubai increased by 58 per cent in the first half of this year when compared to the same period last year, police have revealed.

In the first half of this year, there were 19 cases of human trafficking with 54 suspects arrested and 35 victims rescued by Dubai Police, Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, Acting Chief of Dubai Police, said in a statement.

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/crime/dubai-sees-58-increase-in-cases-1.657022

A court in the United Arab Emirates has sentenced 17 Indian nationals to death for killing a Pakistani man. About 50 people were involved in the fatal attack in which the Pakistani man was stabbed repeatedly.

In another event:

In February it was reported that 13 members of an alleged bootlegging gang from the Jebel Ali area of Dubai were accused of kidnapping two rivals, raping them and burying them alive.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8592724.stm

Trying to access a prohibited site like flickr.com?

The financial crisis and now two criminal cases that have generated critical headlines in other countries have demonstrated that the emirates remain an absolute monarchy, where institutions are far less important than royalty and where the law is particularly capricious — applied differently based on social standing, religion and nationality, political experts and human rights advocates said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/world/middleeast/22uae.html

Even as the site was being excavated more than five years ago, during the halcyon days of the Dubai miracle, the Emirates construction business was disillusioning. Dogged by human and civil rights violations, the Pakistani, Bengali, Indian, and Chinese workers who poured the reinforced concrete, put in place the support beams, and manned the high cranes that still dominate the Dubai skyline were often subjected to unhygienic, overcrowded living quarters, unsafe working conditions, and withheld wages.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/81082807.html

Less than a week ago, a 15-year-old sex trade victim turned to Dubai Police to free her from her captors after she managed to escape with the assistance of a client. Captain Ahmad Obaid Bin Hadibah, Head of Dubai Police’s Department of Combating Human Trafficking, told Gulf News the section handled 15 cases of human trafficking in the first nine months of this year, which is close to the figure dealt with in the same period in 2008

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/crime/dubai-turns-up-heat-on-human-traffickers-1.512618

A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country’s royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=7402099

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html