Rape victim arrested for having sex outside of marriage when she reported the crime and told she had to MARRY her attacker!

A 29-year old Austrian woman who was raped in Dubai has been arrested for having "extra marital sex", which is illegal in the United Arab Emirates.

She was then told by the police that the only way to avoid jail time was to marry her attacker!  The student from Vienna, Austria was facing a jail sentence for having sex outside of marriage and drinking, which are both serious offences in UAE. It took the intervention of the Austrian Foreign Ministry that she was able to leave the country and go back home.

According to Daily Mail, the unnamed woman, also a Muslim, had been partying at a hotel where rules of alcohol consumption are normally lax. The incident then followed at an underground parking lot after a Yemeni man approached her.

When she reported it to police, she was arrested and told she could only escape being charged if she agreed to marry the man she said had attacked her.
The student was only released after a special crisis team was sent by the Austrian Foreign Ministry to Dubai to negotiate with the authorities.

An online petition also helped to bring attention to the situation, gaining over 260,000 signatures calling for her release in just a few days.

Her quick release came as a surprise because, as a Muslim, she would likely have been treated more severely than non-Muslim Western visitors in trouble with police because of the strict Islamic rules surrounding drinking.