By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/New York Times – DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A Norwegian woman who was sentenced to 16 months in jail in Dubai for having sex outside marriage after reporting that she had been raped said Friday that she had decided to speak out in hopes of drawing attention to the risks to outsiders who might misunderstand the Islamic-influenced legal codes in this cosmopolitan city.

The case has drawn outrage from human rights groups and others in the West since the woman, a 24-year-old interior designer, was sentenced Wednesday. It also highlights the increasingly frequent tensions between the United Arab Emirates’ international atmosphere and its legal system, which is strongly influenced by Islamic traditions in a nation where foreign workers and visitors greatly outnumber citizens.

“I have to spread the word,” the woman, Marte Deborah Dalelv, said in an interview at a Norwegian aid compound in Dubai where she is preparing her appeal, scheduled for early September. “After my sentence we thought, ‘How can it get worse?’ ”

Ms. Dalelv, who voluntarily went public to talk to the news media about her case, has worked for an interior design firm in Qatar since 2011. She claims that she was sexually assaulted by a co-worker in March while she was attending a business meeting in Dubai.

She said she fled to the hotel lobby and asked that the police be called. Hotel employees asked if she was sure she wanted to involve the police, Ms. Dalelv said.

“Of course I want to call the police,” she said. “That is the natural reaction where I am from.”

Ms. Dalelv said she was given a medical examination to check for evidence of rape and underwent a blood test for alcohol. Such tests are common in the United Arab Emirates when allegations of assault are made, as well as in other cases. Alcohol is sold across Dubai, but public intoxication can bring charges.

via Accuser’s Sentence in Dubai Rape Case Stirs Anger in West – NYTimes.com.