Word: french
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...rape of a teenager by three strangers. But that act of violence also risks transforming a glittering metropolis and vacation destination, in the minds of some people, into a place to be avoided, and the attack has sparked strong reaction everywhere from Hollywood to the top levels of the French government...
...Last July 14, Alexandre Robert, a 15-year-old French-Swiss youth living in Dubai with his hotel-manager father, was offered a ride home by an Emirati acquaintance from a beach club, where he was with a French friend. In the car were two local men. According to Alexandre, he was placed in the middle backseat, while the men drove the teenagers beyond the neon-soaked skyline and into the desert, where the three local men took turns raping him at knifepoint in the dark. His French friend was ordered to wait outside the car, and has told police...
...four in the morning telling her what had happened. "My instinct was to get on the first plane to Dubai," she says. But another instinct kicked in too - that of a veteran political journalist, with connections at the top levels of the Elysée Palace and the French foreign ministry. Within minutes of speaking to Alexandre, Véronique Robert - who spent years as a producer for Canal Plus Television - woke up French diplomats in Dubai, who dispatched the consulate's attorney to accompany Alexandre back to the Dubai police station...
...contacts to press her son's case, and got early word to Sarkozy of what had happened. In an Elysée meeting in July, Sarkozy told the UAE leader that he wanted "utmost attention" given to Alexandre's alleged attack, according to a confidential diplomatic telex from the French ambassador to the Emirates to his bosses in Paris...
...Despite that, Dubai officials reported three times that the two suspects were not infected with the HIV virus, according to French diplomats, even though that appears to be untrue. A document released by government officials to French diplomats in August showed that one man had tested positive while in prison four years ago. Alexandre will receive word only in January whether he was infected during the alleged attack. "There is a lot of malfunctioning, but from where I do not know," says a French diplomat in Dubai, explaining the bungling over the AIDS tests. In late October, the French foreign...