{"id":1956,"date":"2026-03-31T10:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/1956\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T10:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:25:10","slug":"i-filmed-this-air-strike-in-dubai-then-i-had-to-flee-fearing-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/1956\/","title":{"rendered":"I filmed this air strike in Dubai. Then I had to flee fearing arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

A British influencer who filmed the aftermath of an Iranian strike<\/a> in Dubai says he felt compelled to flee for fear of arrest under the United Arab Emirates\u2019 strict cyber crime laws.<\/p>\n

Hadi Makhmudi, 21, from London, uploaded his footage of debris from the attack and a burning hotel to social media on 28 February, the day the Iran war began. His video rapidly went viral but prompted warnings and threats from commenters that he would be arrested<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just walking out of the mall in Jumeirah [a residential strip on the waterfront] and I suddenly see what looks almost like a lightning bolt strike. Immediately, there was this huge earthquake-like sound and then the hotel went up in flames. Everyone started running on the street, screaming.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ran closer to see if I could help out, but there was nothing I could do so I recorded it\u2026 I posted two videos about it and then straight away I started getting thousands and thousands of views within seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt got millions of views within a few hours. The hate I was getting was incredible. People were saying \u2018Oh, you\u2019re going to get arrested. You can\u2019t do this in our country. It\u2019s against the law.\u2019 They were all tagging the UAE government<\/a>, saying \u2018arrest this guy\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe videos kept getting loads of views. But then I got so scared of all the threats so I took down the videos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Makhmudi said he decided that he should \u201cget out of the country as soon as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

The first flight to the UK that he booked was cancelled and he described how he \u201creally thought any second that the police were going to kick my door down and arrest me,\u201d while he was waiting to leave the country.<\/p>\n

Eventually, he managed to get a flight back to the UK, where he felt safe enough to repost the videos.<\/p>\n

New FeatureIn ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.<\/p>\n

Makhmudi runs a remote sales mentorship with almost 100 members and regularly works abroad, in countries including Australia and Indonesia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to go to university, and then my mother passed away and I fell into a lot of issues with drug addiction and just really bad habits,\u201d he told The i Paper.<\/p>\n

After a trip to Thailand, where he saw people making a living working remotely, he went all in on trying to make a remote income on the side of university.<\/p>\n

He joined a sales mentorship and was hired into a role where he earned \u00a32,000 to \u00a33,000 a month working remotely in South East Asia, which \u201creally opened [his] eyes up\u201d before starting his own business, he said.<\/p>\n

Two or three months ago, Makhmudi started working as an influencer, which was something he had \u201calways wanted to do\u201d. He had been considering moving to Dubai for tax reasons when the missile struck the city-state.<\/p>\n

Those plans have now been upended after he fled Dubai and is unlikely to be able to return. The threat of arrest is high, with UK-based campaign group Detained in Dubai claiming that up to 70 UK citizens have been arrested for taking photos and videos of Iranian attacks and some reportedly targeted just for receiving them.<\/p>\n

The situation for those arrested can rapidly get worse. Radha Stirling, chief executive of Detained in Dubai, said that videoing a strike \u201ccan very, very quickly escalate from a cyber crime charge, which can be a maximum of two years, to a national security issue, and in that situation, you\u2019re just held indefinitely without access to your embassy or a lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gulf state has been one of the most frequently targeted by Iran since the start of the war, intercepting 1,806 drones, 15 cruise missiles and 357 ballistic missiles, according to a post from the UAE\u2019s Ministry of Defence on 24 March.<\/p>\n

Many people in Dubai have left due to the ongoing conflict, but Makhmudi said that he felt relatively safe. \u201cThe probability of being hit by a strike was very low, so from that standpoint it didn\u2019t feel unsafe.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he added that Dubai no longer seems like a \u201csafe haven\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow there are alerts, sirens, flights being cancelled and no one can get out of the country. It did feel unsafe, and it did feel like pandemonium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dubai is known as the influencer capital of the world. There are an estimated 50,000 influencers in the city, who receive tax-free status and other perks from the state.<\/p>\n

However, influencers in the UAE who want to monetise their content have to obtain a government-issued licence.<\/p>\n

Social media has been awash with videos from these influencers asserting that the city is safe and that the UAE government will protect them.<\/p>\n

One particular video template was posted dozens of times. It begins by posing the question: \u201cYou\u2019re in Dubai right now. Aren\u2019t you scared?\u201d followed by a variation of \u201cNo. Because I know who protects us,\u201d accompanied by a video of the UAE\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

Makhmudi himself posted a version of this video.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI suspect that the Dubai government, on purpose, made praising them a trend on the algorithm\u2026 And so me posting the videos praising the UAE government was partly me jumping on the bandwagon and also partly because I do have some respect for the Dubai government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some comments under videos like these suggested that creators had been paid or forced to make these videos.<\/p>\n

Makhmudi said that he did not know of anyone who had been paid to do so.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI didn\u2019t feel pressure to post pro-government content, those sorts of videos were just performing well. But, it was also in the back of my mind that the more positive things I posted about the government, the more lenient a Dubai court might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another influencer who is still in Dubai, Ben Moss, 31, echoed the sentiment: \u201cNobody has been paid or encouraged to say anything \u2026 However, if you were to say anything negative, you could possibly wave goodbye to your visa and I think you would be deported.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained the outpourings of support for the UAE leadership as the result of a \u201ctribal mentality\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe adore the rulers. I\u2019ve been here for three years now, and even I fall into this. You end up embracing that culture. So it\u2019s a cultural thing to adore your leaders and adore what they do for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Dubai is still frequently targeted by deadly strikes, Moss said that people have become accustomed to the danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, when the alerts go off on your phone, people just sit there at the cafe like nothing is happening, because everyone has realised statistically, it\u2019s very unlikely one of these things is going to hit you.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the UAE\u2019s air defence systems are largely managing to protect the population of the Gulf state, hundreds of expats are languishing in prisons.<\/p>\n

Stirling explained that people are placed in a difficult and confusing situation when sent to prison in the UAE. \u201cWhen people are put in a police station, I think the police circulate rumours telling them, \u2018don\u2019t hire a lawyer, don\u2019t hire a lawyer\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the exact opposite of what you should do in most of these cases, because if you don\u2019t, you\u2019ve got no one to navigate the process or expedite your case.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cThe police are kind of taking advantage of this time where they\u2019ve got almost total power and authority with basically no government oversight because the government is very busy. It is chaos. You\u2019ve got people who are scheduled for deportation that aren\u2019t being deported.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stirling said that one British national had been transferred to Al-Awir prison rather than being deported.<\/p>\n

She described the prison as \u201cone of the worst ones\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a British citizen, Albert Douglas, who was detained there. He was physically beaten, his bones were broken and he was tortured. Because of the chaos at the moment, there is genuinely no oversight. In the past, there\u2019s even been a death in custody.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the war drags on, it is expected that more Brits will find themselves on the wrong side of the UAE\u2019s cyber crime laws.<\/p>\n

The Dubai government did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A British influencer who filmed the aftermath of an Iranian strike in Dubai says he felt compelled to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1194,1365,1437,142,1438,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-1956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-dubai","9":"tag-human-rights","10":"tag-iran-crisis","11":"tag-social-media","12":"tag-uae","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}