IT WASN’T the street prostitute grabbing his arm to offer him sex during an overnight layover in Dubai that shocked Angus Thomas. It was her pathetic grip and cold hand that alarmed him.
Angus, who was approached within seconds of leaving his hotel, said: “Her hand was so cold and her hold on me so weak I knew something was wrong.
“I stopped to talk to her and she was emaciated, it was obvious she hadn’t chosen to do this. Her plight touched me deeply – I asked her if she needed help.”
Over the coming days Angus became even more determined to help the woman – and others like her – after learning she had been beaten by her madam for speaking to a Westerner without earning any money from him.
The brief interaction with the Nigerian woman was the start of a remarkable journey that led him to launch a campaign group to help trafficked women.
Since then, the Brit has saved at least 50 from a horrific life of sexual exploitation in Dubai, one of the world’s major hubs for sex trafficking.
Fearing that his campaigning presents a risk to both his safety and his liberty, he has never returned to the oil-rich emirate since that first visit in 2019.
Instead he has built up an underground network of like-minded individuals based in Dubai, who rescue the women and arrange their safe passage home.
During The Sun’s visit, which uncovered the secret sex market operating in high-end hotel nightclubs, we travelled to a little-known neighbourhood to see first-hand how Angus’ team are leading the fightback against the trafficking trade.
The married dad-of-five, 62, said: “My life has been threatened twice by the traffickers, who are very dangerous people.
“But my biggest fear is the authorities in the UAE. I was due to go back to Dubai two weeks after I helped that first woman but I was warned by a police officer here in the UK that I could be on a watch list.
“I could be detained at the airport when I land on some trumped up charge, disappear into the system and who knows how long it would take for me to get out?”
Ripe for abuse
Dubai is booming – the population passed four million this year and the crane-packed skyline is testament to the huge amount of development as it becomes a major tourism and business centre.
But 93 per cent of the population are ex-pats, many being men far from home with money in their pockets.
And the visa system is ripe for abuse – each emirati has a number of residency visas which are used to employ cooks, drivers and other staff.
But some of these get passed through various hands and end up with the traffickers, who use them to bring women from poor countries to Dubai on the pretence of regular work in hotels and restaurants.
It is only when the women arrive and their passports and phones are taken off them that they realise they have been duped.
Horrific stories have emerged of vulnerable women being taken advantage of by wealthy men, with Ukrainian OnlyFans model Maria Kovalchuk, 20, telling earlier this year of how she was beaten into a coma by Russians at a party.
My life has been threatened twice by the traffickers, who are very dangerous people
Angus Thomas
Angus said: “They are kept prisoner in apartment blocks and forced to have sex with men for money.
“With that first woman I helped, I discovered there were more than 20 who had been trafficked and were being held in two apartments.
“That was just the tip of the iceberg.
“The visa system is woefully regulated and is ripe for exploitation.
“In Africa some women are surviving on two or three dollars a day so it’s not hard to see the attraction of a well-paid job in Dubai with all travel expenses covered.
“Sadly, it’s only when they arrive that they realise that the well-paid job doesn’t exist.”
Dangerous work
Angus’s campaign group, Stop Trafficking Africa, focuses on women from Nigeria, but women travel to Dubai to work as prostitutes from all over the world.
It’s impossible to know the exact numbers involved but some estimates put the total number of sex workers there at 80,000, with as many as 20,000 victims of trafficking.
Keen to meet one of Angus’s network, the brave men and women who operate in the shadows to free the trafficked women, we travelled to the district of Satwa.
Known as Little Manila due to the large number of Filipino migrant workers who live there, the noisy, bustling neighbourhood is only a short drive from the skyscrapers and neon lights of downtown Dubai but feels like a different world.
We receive a WhatsApp message giving the location of where to meet the man, who has worked with Angus for around five years.
As we wait by the side of a busy road thronged with rush hour traffic, he emerges from the crowds and – being the only white faces on the street – he immediately spots us and guides us to a quiet corner of a Pakistani-run café.
Sipping a coffee that cost a twentieth of what guests pay at the five-star Atlantis on Dubai’s famed Palm, he explains his dangerous work.
The man, whose government day job means he has to remain anonymous, said: “I first met Angus soon after he began helping that very first lady.
“Since then we have helped so many women.
“The women have been deceived into coming here with the promise of work in hotels and restaurants.
“But when they get here their passports and phones are taken off them, they are stranded and quickly realise it is not proper work, it is sex work.
“The clients might pay 200AED (£41), but that money goes to the madam, the women don’t get anything.
“One madam will run perhaps five girls, all working seven days a week. That’s a lot of money.
“The women want to go home but they don’t have a passport or any way of contacting their families.
“Sometimes police contact me when they raid a house so I can help the girls.
“Other times I track down the women myself – I get a tip that some women are in a building and can’t leave.
“Or I might get a call from a family in Africa to say their daughter moved here for work but they have not heard from her and are worried.
“I speak to my contacts in the police and sometimes I can find her but others I can’t. Sometimes they are lost in the system, other times they are just lost.
I say to them – what if it was your daughter? They reply: ‘I don’t care – it’s business’
Anonymous
“For the women I rescue I contact an NGO or a charity such as Angus’s to provide funds for replacement passports and travel home.
“When they get home I often get a call from their parents to thank me. They are so grateful which makes me feel fulfilled and happy.
“It got worse after Covid when many people lost their jobs back home and turned to this work.
“I get threats all the time. The traffickers phone me after a raid, furious I have helped the women return home.
“They demand that I pay the money they have lost or they will come looking for me, but they never do.
“I say to them – what if it was your daughter? They reply: ‘I don’t care – it’s business.’
“I have daughters myself and it makes me feel terrible to think of other girls in that position.
“It is good to send a woman back home because I know that’s one less victim in the world.”
We say our goodbyes and he vanishes into the busy streets of Satwa, his phone pinging with messages about tasks that need attention for the three victims he is currently helping.
Sex work in plain sight
Back in downtown Dubai, and other neighbourhoods popular with tourists and businessmen, the sex trade is never hard to find.
Hotel nightclubs in the Deira area of Dubai are packed with women who can charge far more than the mostly African women trapped in apartments, usually 1,000 Dirhams [£208] an hour.
Dubai’s strict laws
THE UAE is made up of seven emirates, of which Dubai is one.
Rules for travellers within the country have always been looked upon as draconian to Westerners heading to the hotspot.
However, changes to laws there have drastically altered the landscape for holidaymakers.
Boozing and living together outside marriage is now allowed in the United Arab Emirates after a historic relaxation of the country’s strict Islamic laws in 2020.
A person still must be at least 21 years old to buy alcohol legally in the UAE and anyone caught selling alcohol to someone deemed underage will be punished.
However, it can still only be consumed privately or in licensed public places.
In a major overhaul of the legal system, so-called honour killings were also criminalised, and there are harsher punishments for men who harass women.
The changes were part of the country’s drive to attract Western tourists and businesses despite the strict Sharia-based legal system.
Around 250,000 Brits live in the UAE, out of 8.4 million foreigners, and dozens have been targeted in recent years for breaking alcohol and drugs laws, or kissing in public.
While there is no official dress code as such, modesty is appreciated and advised, especially in public places.
Homosexuality remains illegal and same-sex marriages are not recognised.
Drugs are strictly forbidden and the Emirati authorities count the presence of drugs in the blood stream as possession.
Swearing and making rude gestures (including online) are considered obscene acts and offenders can be jailed or deported.
Taking pictures or videos of the people, especially women and children without their consent is considered to be an invasion of privacy and you might be penalised or sent to jail.
If you openly criticise or mock or insult Dubai’s royal family, law, culture, and religion you risk the chance of being arrested.
Angus feels international hotel firms could do a lot more to combat the problem.
He said: “The hotel companies owe a duty of care to their shareholders and customers because they have anti-slavery policies and mission statements making all of these promises about operating well, but they are allowing their premises to be used to transact sex.
“So much more could be done across the board.
“Dubai like all of the UAE is involved in a multi-trillion dollar exercise to transform itself for the post-oil era and this is something that they should address as part of that.
“The weird aspect is that it is an Arab country with strict rules about modesty and other aspects of human behaviour.
“So they are presenting this public face of decorum but behind closed doors there is all this debauchery.
“Actually, it is not behind closed doors at all – it’s in bars and hotels and other places where British tourists and others can easily see it.
“It’s in plain sight.”
‘Easy come, easy go’
In areas such as Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the wealthy clients get charged even more, up to 3,000 Dirhams [£626].
One ex-pat who has lived in Dubai for a number of years told The Sun: “Easy come, easy go, for the customers and the girls.
“DIFC has a constant flow of men who both live in the UAE and are coming in and out on business, so they earn good money.”
The UAE made trafficking a crime in 2006 and has recently tightened laws further with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for the worst offenders.
But the US State Department says more needs to be done.
In a report last year it stated that the UAE was trying but still does not “fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”.
It added: “Most trafficking cases registered in the UAE are classified as sexual exploitation.”
And the report also revealed that the UAE government “did not make efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts”.
Angus and his undercover network will never give up trying to rescue the trafficking victims.
But the man we met painted a pessimistic picture: “This is a global problem – it will never stop.”