Marte Deborah Dalelv (born 1988) is a Norwegian woman, who in 2013, received a prison sentence of 16 months in Dubai, United Arab Emirates for perjury, consensual extramarital sex and alcohol consumption. Dalelv had originally reported a man to the police for an alleged rape but withdrew the rape allegation several days later, saying at that time that the intercourse had been voluntary. In court she claimed she had been raped.
Dalelv's boss was jailed for 13 months for alcohol consumption and having consensual sex. Dalelv appealed the conviction and had a hearing scheduled for September 2013, but she was pardoned on 22 July, a few days after Norwegian media reported the news and after it had drawn extensive international media attention, which caused an uproar on both social media and traditional Western media outlets. Human rights activists and politicians expressed strong criticism of the Dubai justice system's handling of the incident. In Norway the criticism, as first expressed by professor in religious studies, Dag Øistein Endsjø, was mainly against the initial lack of official Norwegian reaction against what was considered a human rights violation against a Norwegian citizen. The incident occurred in March 2013 and was first reported by Norwegian media on 17 July 2013.
Dalelv had worked as an interior designer in Qatar since 2011 until this incident.
Allegations of rape and investigation
Dalelv's account
Dalelv was in Dubai for a business meeting and joined colleagues from her company in Qatar for a night out on 6 March at a hotel nightclub on Sheikh Zayed Road. She reported that it was a long evening where everyone drank a lot. She asked a colleague, a Sudanese man named Hawari (alternatively reported as HM in some reports) to help her back into her room, because she was drunk. But he brought her into his room and said to her that he would sleep on the sofa and she could sleep in the bed.
In her account, she then removed her clothes except for her underwear and slept in the bed with HM on a sofa. Later she described presumably more details to the press. In Sky News was to read: "She said that she wanted to calm this situation down and that she sat down and wanted to drink her bottle of water and after it she wanted to go, to find her room by herself, but this was the last thing she remembered". To the day after this situation she reported, that she had woken up in the morning and realised she was being raped. She claimed she had tried to resist the man, but he pushed her head down; room-service then knocked on the door and she escaped. She stated that she had gone down to the lobby and asked the people in the lobby to call the police for her.
Police investigation
Dalelv made the initial complaint of rape early on 7 March. According to the police transcripts, she told the questioning police officer: "I had three glasses of vodka, one mojito and a beer while we were at the club, and I asked [the person] to protect me from molestation attempts". In the same account, she reported taking a cab with colleagues, including the alleged attacker, to the hotel where they were staying and that she had forgotten where her room was located. Images from the hotel's closed-circuit TV camera, which were produced in court, show Dalelv entering her colleague's room with her arm placed around his waist in one snapshot, and resting her head on his shoulder in another. Prosecution records cited Dalelv admitting she initiated the sexual activity with H.A. and he responded.
Dalelv said a medical examination seeking evidence of the alleged rape and a blood test for alcohol were taken as a standard procedure. The Dubai police forensic report confirmed the woman had had sex but there was no mention of any physical violence. She claims she was then held in custody for three days and that both her money and her passport were confiscated. After four days, she was loaned a phone card and contacted her stepfather in Norway.
Retraction
Six days later, on 12 March, Dalelv returned to the police and retracted her allegation, saying that she had made the initial complaint "because I was under the influence of alcohol". She told the public prosecutor's office, in one of the many hearings, that she had had consensual sex. According to the prosecution records, Dalelv said "I confirm that he did not rape me, but had sex with me with my consent".