Abduction in legal terms refers to ‘taking a person away utilizing persuasion, fraud, or force’. It can also be an act of unlawful interference with a family relationship, such as the taking of a child from its parent, irrespective of whether the person abducted consents or not.
Federal Decree-Law No. 31 of 2021 On the Issuance of the Crimes and Penalties Law (the ‘UAE Penal Code’) penalizes the act of kidnapping, and Article 344 reads as:
Any person who kidnaps, arrests, or detains another person, or deprives him of his freedom, by any means, either by himself or through an intermediary, in violation of the law, shall be sentenced to life imprisonment
The penalty shall be life imprisonment in the following instances:
- If the act takes place by impersonating a public capacity, pretending the performance or assignment of a public service or to contact under a false identity.
- In case the act is performed by way of deception or accompanied by the use of force, threat of killing, inflicting severe bodily harm or by acts of physical or psychological torture.
- If the act is perpetrated by two or more armed persons.
- If the period of kidnapping, arresting, detaining or depriving freedom exceeds one month.
- In case the victim is female, a juvenile, an insane or imbecile, or a disabled person.
- In case the purpose of the act is to draw profit, revenge, rape the victim, disgrace him, injure him or have him perpetrate a crime.
- If the act is perpetrated against a public servant during, or because of, the discharge of his duties.
Should the act lead to the death of the victim, the sanction shall be the death penalty or life. Shall be sanctioned to the same penalty prescribed for the principal perpetrator, any of the intermediaries in the perpetration of any of the crimes.
A sentence of life imprisonment or even the death penalty can thus be imposed on a person for child abduction in the UAE.
Parental Child Abduction
Parental child abduction may also occur, and it can be best understood through an example: Suppose a British husband divorces his Australian wife and, as part of the divorce terms, grants the mother the custody of their five-year-old daughter.
The mother now lives in the UAE, and the father visits occasionally. On one such visit, the father decides to take the daughter back with him to the UK without informing the mother. The mother, on finding this out and on being unable to contact her daughter, immediately registers a criminal case against the father in the UAE as this act constitutes ‘parental child abduction’ in the UAE.
Parental child abduction thus constitutes a criminal offence in the UAE even if a parent or grandparent abducts their child or grandchild from the person who has legal guardianship or custody established under a judicial decision by UAE courts, as per Article 380 of the UAE Penal Code, and it may result either in a jail sentence or a fine.
Under the UAE laws, a parent can also obtain a court order to impose a travel ban on their minor children, which will be enforced at all airports in the country to ensure that the child is not taken out of the country without the permission of the parent or the custodian of the child.
Legal Update:
The above information might not apply if both parties are non-muslim. Starting from the 1st of February 2023, UAE issued specific family law to be applied between non-muslim expatriate residents in case none of them wanted to apply his/her home country's law in the UAE. To know more information about this law, please feel free to click this link.
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