This story began with a Facebook post. In the spring of 2017, Karolina Voychic, a 23-year-old student from Krokoff, was looking for a way to pay for her education and help her mother with her mortgage. She worked as a waitress and did some translation work on the side, but she was constantly short of money.
In one of the women’s groups, she saw a post about surrogacy in the United Arab Emirates. The amount immediately caught her attention. $150,000 for one pregnancy. Karolina contacted a representative of the agency. A woman with a Polish accent explained the conditions, a full medical examination, a 9-month contract, accommodation in a comfortable apartment in Dubai, medical supervision in a private clinic, payment of all expenses, plus a fee after giving birth.
The clients were a wealthy couple from the Emirates who were having trouble conceiving. Everything was legal and official. Karolina spent several weeks researching information about surrogacy. She read dozens of stories from women who had successfully gone through the process. She talked to her mother who was skeptical but did not try to dissuade her. Money solved a lot of problems.
At the end of May, Carolina signed a preliminary agreement and underwent a medical examination in Warsaw. The results were good. Young, healthy, no chronic diseases. In July, the agency sent her a plane ticket and the main contract, 28 pages in English. Karolina hired a translator and asked him to explain all the clauses. Most of them seemed standard.
obligations to carry and give birth to a healthy child, comply with medical prescriptions, refrain from alcohol and drugs, and visit the doctor regularly. There was a clause about penalties for violating the regime, a clause about the client’s right to receive the child immediately after birth and a clause about confidentiality.
The interpreter pointed out several points that he found strange. The contract stated that Carolina would give the agency full access to her medical records and agree to any necessary medical procedures determined by the clinic’s doctors. Another clause stated that in the event of complications, the agency would not be liable for the consequences.
The translator said that such wording is common in medical documents, but it would be better to consult a lawyer. Karolina consulted a lawyer. The lawyer said that the contract looked standard for international surrogacy, although some clauses were vaguely worded. He advised her to ask the agency for clarification.
Carolina wrote to the representative. The reply came 2 days later. All the clauses were standard. The clinic was internationally accredited and the contract complied with UAE law. There was nothing to worry about. She signed it. On July 23rd, she flew to Dubai. At the airport, she was met by a driver with a sign who took her to a clinic on the outskirts of the city.
The building was modern glass with the medical cent’s logo on the facade. Inside, there was marble, air conditioning, and uniformed administrators. Karolina was shown into the doctor’s office. Dr. Hassan introduced himself as the chief specialist in reproductive technology. He explained the procedure. First a complete examination, then preparation of the body with hormonal drugs, then embryo implantation.
The whole process would take several weeks. Carolina would live in a special residential building attached to the clinic where everything she needed was available. After successful implantation, she would be transferred to an apartment in the city. The examination took 3 days. Blood tests, ultrasounds, examinations by various specialists.
Everything was professional. No red flags. On the fourth day, Carolina was moved to the residential building. The room was small, a bed, a table, a wardrobe, and a private bathroom. The window overlooked the courtyard. The setting was more like a dormatory than a hotel, but it was quite acceptable. The hormone injections began.
Every morning, a nurse came, gave her an injection, and checked her blood pressure and temperature. Carolina felt fine, except for a little nausea. She asked when she would be transferred to the city. The nurse replied that after the implantation, she would have to wait. 2 weeks later, the embryo transfer procedure was performed.
Karolina signed the consent form and was taken to the operating room. Everything went quickly under local anesthesia. After the procedure, she spent the day in the ward under observation, then returned to her room. The doctor said that now she had to wait 2 weeks to confirm the pregnancy. The wait was nerve-wracking.
Karolina hardly left her room. They brought her books and a tablet with internet access. She contacted her mother via messenger and told her that everything was going well. Her mother asked when she would be coming home. Karolina replied that in about 9 months as planned. 2 weeks later the test confirmed the pregnancy. Dr.
Hassan congratulated her and said that everything was going well. Now the observation period would begin. Karolina asked about moving into the apartment. The doctor replied that in the coming weeks they needed to make sure that the pregnancy was developing steadily. Weeks passed, but the move did not happen. Karolina began to worry.
She asked the nurses when she would be discharged. The answers were evasive. Soon, the doctor decides, “We need to wait for the test results.” She tried to leave the building, but the doors on the first floor were locked with electronic locks. The security guard politely explained that this was for the safety of the patients and that they could only leave with a pass.
In the sixth week of her pregnancy, Karolina was summoned to Dr. Hassan’s office. With him was another man who introduced himself as Mr. Al- Maktum, the AY’s lawyer. They asked her to sit down and placed some documents in front of her. Dr. Hassan explained that when she signed the contract, there were some addenda that she might not have read in full.
He spoke calmly and methodically in particular addendum number three which he had signed along with the main contract. Carolina did not remember any addendum number three. She asked to see it. Mr. Al-Maktum handed her a folder. Inside were pages in English with her signature and the date at the bottom. July 2017.
Carolina began to read. The text was legal ease, complicated, but the gist was clear. She agreed to participate in an extended surrogacy program which involved carrying at least 10 pregnancies over a period not exceeding 15 years. She read it twice. 10 pregnancies. 15 years. It was impossible.
She had signed a contract for one pregnancy, 9 months. She said this out loud. Mr. Al-Maktum replied that her signature was at the bottom of each page and that everything was completely legal. Carolina tried to object. She said she had been deceived, that she didn’t understand what she was signing, that she wanted to terminate the contract and return home.
Dr. Hassan shook his head. He explained that according to UAE law and the terms of the contract, she could no longer unilaterally terminate the agreement. The pregnancy had begun. The embryo had been implanted. Termination of the pregnancy was prohibited without medical indications. And after giving birth, preparations for the next pregnancy would begin.
She asked what would happen if she refused. Mr. Al-Maktum replied that in that case, the agency would be forced to apply penalties in accordance with the contract. The amount was $2 million plus all medical expenses. Criminal prosecution for fraud and breach of contract is also possible in the UAE where the punishment for this can be severe. Karolina sat in shock.
$2 million, a criminal case. She didn’t understand how this had happened. She asked for a lawyer and wanted to contact the Polish consulate. Mr. Al-Maktum said that she had the right to a lawyer, but first recommended that she carefully review all the documents she had signed. the consulate would be informed that she was here of her own free will participating in a legal medical program.
That evening, Karolina tried to contact her mother, but the internet on her tablet stopped working. She asked the nurse for a phone, but the nurse said it was not possible at the moment as the doctor had forbidden her to get upset as it was harmful to her pregnancy. Karolina started screaming, demanding to be put in touch with the outside world.
Security arrived and the nurse gave her a sedative injection. She fell asleep. When she woke up, she had been moved to another room. It was not a room, but rather a ward, a metal bed, a bedside table, a toilet, and a sink in the corner. There were no windows. The door was locked from the outside. The walls were painted white and the lighting consisted of cold fluorescent lamps.
Thus began Carolina Voychic’s confinement. She spent her first pregnancy in this ward. The regime was strict. Wake up at 7:00 in the morning, breakfast at 8, medical examination at 9:00. Meals were served three times a day. The diet was prescribed by doctors, and the portions were small. No snacks, no special requests.
Once a week she had an ultrasound and once a month an extended examination. Karolina tried to protest, refused to eat, and demanded to meet with consulate representatives. The staff ignored her demands. When she refused to eat, they put her on IV drips with nutrient solutions. When she screamed, they gave her sedatives. After a few weeks, she realized that resistance was futile.
The only thing she could control was her mental state. The pregnancy proceeded normally. Dr. Hassan conducted regular examinations, monitored the development of the fetus, and adjusted vitamins and supplements. He treated her not as a person, but as a patient, a carrier. He asked questions only about her well-being and symptoms, no personal conversations.
At 38 weeks, Karolina went into labor. She was taken to the maternity ward, which was located in the same complex. The birth was natural without complications. The baby was a girl, healthy, weighing 3 kg, 200 g. Carolina saw her for a few seconds. Then the newborn was taken away. She never saw her again.
After the birth, she was given 2 days to recover. On the third day, Dr. Hassan came, examined her, and said that everything was fine. The uterus was contracting normally. In 2 weeks, preparations for the next pregnancy would begin. Karolina just remained silent. She no longer had the strength to argue. Preparations began 3 weeks later.
Again, hormone injections again. Tests again, waiting for ovulation. A month later, the second implantation was performed. The pregnancy was confirmed. The cycle repeated itself. The second pregnancy was more difficult. Carolina gained weight, developed edema, and her blood pressure rose. The doctors adjusted her treatment and added medications.
The delivery was more complicated and required an aesiottomy. The baby was a boy and was taken away immediately. After the second birth, Karolina tried to figure out where she was. From the staff’s conversations, she realized that the clinic was located somewhere in the desert, far from the city. Apparently, it was an isolated medical complex where women were brought for similar programs.
She was not the only one. Sometimes she heard the voices of other women in the hallway and the cries of babies. She tried to talk to the nurse to ask how many others like her were there. The nurse, a Filipino woman in her 40s, did not answer right away. Then she quietly said that she was not allowed to talk to patients about personal matters.
But Karolina saw sympathy in her eyes. That gave her hope. Her third pregnancy began 4 weeks after her second delivery. Carolina’s body protested. Her hormonal balance was disrupted and she developed problems with her cycle. The doctors increased the doses of medication. The implantation was successful, but the pregnancy was accompanied by toxicosis, constant nausea, and weakness.
By this point, almost 2 years had passed since her arrival in Dubai. Karolina lost track of time. The days merged into one gray mass. Examinations, injections, tests, ultrasounds, childbirth, a short break, and then preparation again. Her body had turned into a machine for carrying children. The doctors only made sure that she did not die and could continue to give birth.
During her third pregnancy, she asked Dr. Hassan who the children were given to. He replied that it was none of her business. The children were given to families according to contracts. Each pregnancy was paid for separately. The money was accumulated in her account, and she would receive it after fulfilling all her obligations.
Karolina did not believe him. She understood that she would never see the money. After her third delivery, her physical condition deteriorated. She developed vein problems, varicose veins, back pain, and hormonal imbalances. The doctors provided supportive care, but nothing more. The minimum necessary to continue the program.
During her fourth pregnancy, she had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. Carolina was taken for a DNC which was a painful procedure. Dr. Hassan was unhappy saying that it reduced the effectiveness of the program. She was given 3 weeks to recover. Then the preparation began again. The fourth successful pregnancy ended in premature birth at 36 weeks.
The baby was small but survived. After giving birth, Karolina was transferred back to the ward. She had stretch marks all over her stomach. Her breasts sagged and her hair began to fall out. She was 26 years old, but she looked 40. Somewhere between her fifth and sixth pregnancies, she tried to kill herself.
She saved up the sleeping pills she was given and took them all at once. She was found unconscious in the morning, pumped out, and put on an IV. After that, her medication was strictly controlled and she was forced to swallow it in front of a nurse. Psychologically, Karolina was on the verge of collapse. There were days when she just lay there staring at the ceiling, unresponsive.
There were days when she cried for hours. The staff paid no attention. The only thing that mattered was her ability to carry her next child to term. During her sixth pregnancy, something happened that changed her situation a little. A new intern, a young doctor named Ahmed, arrived at the clinic. He was about 30 years old and looked different from the rest of the staff.
There was less indifference in his eyes. During one of the examinations, he lingered and asked her how she was feeling, not formally, but in a human way. Carolina cautiously tried to find out if he knew what was going on in this clinic. Akmed replied evasively, saying that he was new here doing his internship. She asked if he could help.
He looked at her for a long time, then shook his head, and left. Over the next few weeks, he showed up regularly, conducted examinations, and took tests. Karolina didn’t bring up the subject of help, afraid that he would be replaced. But one day when no one else was in the ward, Akmed said quietly that he understood her situation.
He said there were several others like her here. Women from different countries brought here under various pretexts held against their will. She asked why he didn’t go to the police. Akmed explained that the clinic had powerful connections. The owners were linked to influential people. The paperwork was flawless and all the contracts were legally valid.
The police would not investigate. Moreover, if he tried to do something, he would simply be fired or worse. Karolina asked him to pass on a message to her mother, at least to let her know that she was alive. Akmed said it was dangerous, but he would think about it. A week later, he came back and said he had tried to find information about her.
It turned out that Karolina was officially dead. The clinic’s database contained documents, a death certificate dated a year earlier. The cause of death was complications during childbirth, throbo embolism. The body was allegedly cremated and the ashes sent to the family. Karolina didn’t believe it at first.
Then she realized that this explained why no one was looking for her. Her mother had received the coffin with the ashes and buried her. The Polish consulate closed the case. Legally, she didn’t exist. She was a ghost, a living corpse locked up in a clinic in the middle of the desert. She asked Akmed if he could bring any evidence out, photographs, CCTV recordings, a copy of the fake death certificate, something that would prove she was alive, that crimes were being committed here.
Ahmed hesitated. He said it was very risky, but on his next visit, he brought a USB flash drive. He said he had copied several files, recordings from the cameras in her room over the past month, scans of her real documents from the clinic’s database, a copy of the fake death certificate.
That might be enough to raise the issue. Karolina asked what he was going to do. Akmed replied that he knew a journalist in Dubai who was involved in investigations. He would pass the materials on to him anonymously. Then we would see what happened. 3 weeks passed. Nothing changed. Karolina continued to carry her sixth pregnancy.
The delivery was difficult with bleeding. She was saved, but her uterus was damaged. Dr. Hassan said that this might be her last pregnancy and that she needed to be examined. The examination showed that she could still carry children, but with an increased risk. The clinic’s management decided to continue the program. They began preparations for the seventh pregnancy.
Then, unexpectedly, the police arrived at the clinic. It was a normal morning. Carolina heard shouting, doors slamming, and footsteps in the hallway. Then, her door opened and two uniformed police officers and a woman in business suit. The woman introduced herself as a representative of an international human rights organization.
She said that they had received information about the illegal detention of people in this clinic. They conducted an inspection and found violations. The clinic was closing and all patients held there against their will would be released. Karolina cried. She couldn’t believe it was real. She was taken out of the ward, transported to a hospital in Dubai, and given a full medical examination.
Over time, it became clear that 11 women in similar situations were being held at the clinic. They were from different countries, the Philippines, Ukraine, Romania, Ethiopia. All of them had been lured with promises of high earnings and were being held against their will. The investigation revealed that the clinic was indeed connected to influential people, but the publication of the materials in the international press caused such a stir that the UAE authorities could not ignore it. Dr.
Hassan, several employees, and the owner of the agency were arrested. Mr. Al-Maktum disappeared, probably leaving the country. Karolina was returned to Poland. Her mother was in shock. She had actually buried her daughter a year ago, receiving ashes that, as it turned out later, were just ash.
The reunion was difficult, full of tears and mistrust. Physically, Carolina was exhausted. Seven pregnancies in 4 years had ruined her health. Doctors in Poland said she would no longer be able to have children as her uterus was irreversibly damaged. Psychologically, she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety.
She began working with a psychotherapist. The trial of the clinic’s owners dragged on. The UAE extradited several defendants, but some remained out of reach. Compensation to the victims was symbolic, and most of the clinic’s assets were withdrawn or frozen. Karolina’s story received widespread publicity.
Journalists wrote articles and made documentaries. She gave interviews and talked about what she had been through. She wanted people to know that this kind of thing could happen. That contracts signed in desperation or trust could turn into a life sentence. Ahmed, the intern who helped her, also testified. He was fired from the clinic immediately after the information was leaked, but he had no regrets.
He said in an interview that he couldn’t remain silent when he saw what was happening to these women. Now, several years later, Karolina lives in Koff. She volunteers for an organization that helps victims of human trafficking. She speaks at conferences, warning women about the dangers of dubious contracts abroad. She is still undergoing therapy and still has nightmares.
She says that the main thing she has realized is that there are places and people in the world for whom a human being is not a person but a resource. Biological material that can be exploited as long as it functions and that no amount of money is worth risking your freedom and your life. The seven children she gave birth to now live in different families.
She does not know where they are, what their names are, or who is raising them. Under UAE law and the terms of her contracts, she has no relationship with them. Legally, she was never their mother. She was only a surrogate. This is what she has to live with every day. This story began in July 2023 when 27-year-old Elizabetha Veronova posted a series of photos from Dubai on her profile.
She was a mid-level influencer with an audience of about 180,000 followers specializing in content about travel and art. Her last post was made on July 23rd. After that, the profile went silent. No one raised the alarm. In the influencer industry, breaks in activity were considered normal. Brands stopped collaborating.
Subscribers gradually lost interest and the account slowly faded away. Voronova flew to Dubai at the invitation of a man who introduced himself as Fared al-Manssuri. He contacted her through a professional agent who worked with artists and models. The offer sounded attractive. Participation in a private art project for a contemporary art collection, $50,000 in payment, accommodation in the collector’s villa.
The work was supposed to take about 2 weeks. Voronova agreed after checking the references of the agent who had real contacts in the art world and worked with several well-known galleries in Europe. Al-Mansuri met her at the airport in person. He was a reserved man in his 50s who spoke proper English with a British accent.
He was dressed in a light colored European style suit. They were driven in a premium car with a driver. During the trip, Al-Manssouri talked about his collection. He collected contemporary art but was particularly interested in works related to the theme of the body and its transformation. He mentioned several well-known artists who worked in this direction.
Voronova took notes. She saw this project as an opportunity to enter more serious art circles. The villa was not located in the city center but on the outskirts in a deserted area where buildings were sparse. It was a house of modern architecture with large glass surfaces and white walls. The territory was fenced off by a high fence.
Inside, the interior was minimalist. There was a lot of light. On the walls hung works that Veronova recognized as the creations of several famous artists. Al-Mansuri showed her around the house, showed her the guest room, and explained the layout. There was practically no staff to be seen, only a driver and a cook who appeared twice a day to prepare meals.
On the first evening, they discussed the details of the project. Al-Mansuri showed her sketches and explained the concept. He wanted to create a series of photographs and video works exploring the idea of immobility and time. Veronova was to be placed in various poses wrapped in special materials resembling bandages.
He explained this as a reference to ancient Egyptian mummification practices, but in a modern context. The work was to be conceptual, no eroticism or provocation, pure art. Voronova asked questions. Al-Mansuri answered in detail and convincingly. He showed her the contract she had signed in Moscow through an intermediary. Everything looked legitimate.
Filming began the next day. Al-Mansori worked methodically. First simple poses. Veronova stood or sat while he took photos from different angles. Then he began to use materials. White strips of fabric soaked in some kind of solution. He explained that it was a special compound that created the desired texture and allowed the material to retain its shape.
The smell was faint, medicinal. Voronova did not object. Al-Mansori worked professionally without unnecessary touching, commenting on each action. The first session lasted about 3 hours. Then he unwound the bandages, thanked her for her work, and let her rest. On the third day, Al-Mansori suggested trying a more complex composition.
He wanted to fix her hands in a certain position to achieve the desired visual effect. He used thin plastic splints which he attached under layers of fabric. Veronova felt discomfort but not severe. Al-Mansori constantly asked if she was in pain and adjusted the tension. After the shoot, he did not immediately remove the contraption.
He said he wanted to take a few more shots with different lighting. Veronova spent about an hour in this position. When she was released, her arms were slightly numb. Al-Mansuri brought a warm towel and helped her stretch her muscles. He apologized for the inconvenience and increased the promised payment by $10,000.
By the end of the first week, the shoots became more intense. Al-Mansuri said he was getting closer to the desired result. Now he was fixing not only her arms but also her legs, using more layers of material. Voronovva began to feel that the project was going beyond what she had expected, but the money was good.
The contract was signed, and she saw no reason to stop. Al-Mansori was polite and attentive. Once she complained of a headache, and he immediately stopped work, brought her medicine, and allowed her to rest for the whole day. On the 10th day, the first serious incident occurred. Al-Mansori asked her to lie down on a special platform that he had set up in one of the rooms.
He explained that this would be the final composition, the most important one. Veronova lay down. Al-Mansori began to wrap her body as usual, but this time he worked longer and used more material. The layers became thicker. Veronova felt that she could not move. She tried to say that she was uncomfortable, but her voice came out muffled because of the fabric that covered part of her face.
Al-Mansuri did not react. He continued to work. Veronova began to panic. She tried to move her arms, but they were completely immobilized. Her legs wouldn’t move either. She tried to scream, but the sound was weak. Al-Mansori finished wrapping her body and walked away. Veronova heard the click of a camera shutter, then silence.
She didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe 10 minutes, maybe more. Her panic grew. Her heart was beating so hard that she could feel her pulse in her ears. Then she heard Al-Mansuri’s voice. He spoke calmly, almost monotonously. He explained that this was the real project, that all the previous days had been preparation, that she would become part of his collection, a living work of art.
Voronova tried to scream, but her voice was still muffled by the material. Al-Mansuri continued to speak. He talked about ancient Egyptian mummification practices. About how priests preserved the bodies of pharaohs for eternal life. About how modern medicine allows this to be done with a living person. That she would exist in this state for many years. That he had done this before.
But those experiments had been unsuccessful. That she was the perfect specimen. Voronova listened and couldn’t believe what was happening. It sounded like the ravings of a madman. She waited for him to laugh and say that it was all part of a performance, that in a minute he would release her and they would laugh at her reaction. But Al-Mansuri did not laugh.
His voice remained calm and serious. He moved closer. Voronova felt a prick in her arm. Then the world began to blur. When she came too, pain was the first thing she felt. a sharp throbbing pain in her hands, specifically in her fingers. She tried to move them but couldn’t, not only because her body was wrapped up, but because her fingers simply didn’t respond.
Voronova opened her eyes. Above her was the ceiling, white with spotlights. She tried to turn her head, but it wouldn’t move. Her body wouldn’t move either, only her eyes. She could blink and move her eyes. Al-Mansori appeared in her field of vision. He was smiling. He said that the procedure had been successful, that he had fixed her joints in the correct position, that now she would not be able to move even if her bandages were removed, that this was necessary for long-term preservation.
Veronova tried to scream, but only a weeze came out of her throat. Al-Mansori explained that her vocal cords were temporarily paralyzed by a mild toxin, that in a few weeks her voice would return, but by then she would be fully prepared and would not want to scream. The following days were a blur. Al-Mansuri gave her regular injections.
Sometimes Veronova fell into asleep or a state of semi- delirium. Sometimes she was conscious and understood everything that was happening. Al-Mansori continued to work on her body. He added layers of material. He changed the bandages for new ones, soaked in other solutions. He explained each stage like a teacher giving a lecture.
He said that he was using special compounds that slowed down the skin’s metabolism and prevented tissue destruction. that nutrition would be delivered through a thin tube inserted into her stomach, that her excretoryy system would be redirected through catheters, that she would feel no discomfort if she did not resist. Forovva did not know how much time had passed when she was moved to another room.
It was a room with high ceilings and subdued lighting. Al-Mansori placed her in a transparent container, a glass sarcophagus, as he called it. Inside was a system for maintaining temperature and humidity. Tubes and wires were hidden under her body. From the outside, the structure looked like a museum exhibit. Al-Mansuri spent a long time adjusting the lighting. He took photographs.
He said that the result exceeded his expectations, that she looked perfect. It was his private gallery. Veronova did not immediately realize that there were other exhibits in the room. When her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw several more containers along the walls. Some of them contained human figures wrapped in bandages.
They all looked like mummies. Forova could not tell whether they were alive or not. The containers were sealed. There was no movement. Only her sarcophagus had a life support system. Wires and tubes were visible upon closer inspection. Al-Mansori came regularly, sometimes alone, sometimes with guests. He showed his collection like a museum guide.
He talked about the concept behind each work. He spoke of Voronova as his latest and most successful acquisition. Guests looked at her, commented on the quality of the workmanship, discussed the details. No one asked questions. No one doubted that they were looking at a work of art and not a living person. Voronova tried to signal.
She moved her eyes, tried to blink more often. No one paid any attention. Time lost its meaning. Days turned into nights. The light in the gallery dimmed in the evening and became brighter in the morning. Al-Mansori came to check the systems. He changed the nutrient solutions. Sometimes he gave injections. Veronova gradually lost her sense of reality.
Sometimes she thought it was an endless nightmare from which she would soon wake up. Sometimes she accepted the situation as a new reality in which she would have to exist for an indefinite period of time. Her thoughts slowed down. Her consciousness dulled. Maybe it was the effect of the chemicals. Maybe it was a protective reaction of the psyche.
At some point, a new person appeared in the gallery. A worker. Al-Manssori had hired him to maintain the villa’s technical systems. His name was Ahmed Khalil, a man of about 35 of Filipino origin. He had been working in Dubai for 8 years. He was engaged in servicing air conditioning and electrical systems in private homes.
Al-Mansuri called him to check the climate control in the gallery. The system was malfunctioning. The temperature was fluctuating, which could damage the exhibits. Khalil entered the gallery with his tools. Al-Mansori explained the problem and left him to work. Khalil began his inspection. He examined the control units and checked the sensors.
Everything was in order with the main system. The problem was in the local controller of one of the containers, the very one where Voronova was located. Khalil moved closer to examine the control panel. He glanced at the contents of the container. He saw a wrapped figure. He thought it was a sculpture or a mannequin.
Then he noticed that the chest was rising and falling slightly, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, but there was movement. Khalil looked more closely. He saw tubes. He saw wires leading into the container. He realized that this was not just an exhibit. He took a step back. He looked at the other containers. He approached the nearest one. No movement.
He returned to the first one. The chest continued to move. Khalil stood in front of the container and tried to figure out what to do. He was not a man prone to impulsive decisions. 8 years of working in Dubai had taught him caution. Wealthy clients could have strange hobbies and collections. He had seen rooms with exotic animals, private museums with questionable exhibits, basements converted into bunkers.
He had learned not to ask unnecessary questions. But this was different. This was a living person sealed in a glass box. He finished checking the climate control faster than he had planned. He gathered his tools. Al-Mansuri was waiting for him in the lobby. Khalil reported the problem with the controller and offered a solution.
Al-Mansuri nodded, paid in cash, and walked him to the exit. Khalil got in his car and drove away. All the way home, he thought about what he had seen. He tried to find a logical explanation. Maybe it was a medical experiment. Maybe some kind of therapy. Maybe the man was sick and this was a way to treat him.
At home, he couldn’t concentrate. His wife asked what was wrong. Khalil said he was tired. He went to bed but couldn’t sleep. In the morning, he decided he had to check. If he was wrong, and it really was a mannequin, then everything was fine. If not, then something had to be done. He called Al-Manssori and said that the system needed to be checked again and a new controller installed.
Al-Mansori agreed. He set a time for the next day. Khalil arrived in the afternoon. Al-Mansori opened the door, let him in, and showed him to the gallery. He left him to work. Khalil pretended to be busy with the installation. He waited for Al-Mansori to leave. When he was alone, he approached the container.
He looked closely at the face. The eyes were open. They were looking at the ceiling. Khalil tapped the glass quietly. The eyes twitched. They looked at him. Khalil felt a chill in his chest. It was definitely a living person. He didn’t know what to do next. It was impossible to free her right now. The container was sealed, and he needed tools.
Even if he opened it, it was unclear what condition the person was in and whether she needed medical attention. Al-Mansuri could return at any moment. Khalil decided to proceed with caution. He finished his work and left the gallery. He told Al-Mansori that everything had been fixed. He left. In the car, he took out his phone.
He wanted to call the police. Then he stopped. He began to think about the consequences. Al-Mansuri was a rich man, a villa on the outskirts, private property, an expensive collection. People like that had connections. Khalil was a foreign worker on a temporary visa. It would be his word against that of a citizen with money and influence.
If the police came and found nothing suspicious or if Almensuri explained the situation differently, Khalil would find himself in an unpleasant situation. He could be deported. He could be accused of slander. He decided to gather evidence first. The next day, he bought a miniature camera. It was a small device that could be hidden in a pocket or attached discreetly. He called Al-Manssori again.
He said he needed to check how the new controller worked and take readings. Al-Mansori agreed, but sounded less friendly. He asked why another visit was necessary. Khalil explained that it was standard procedure, a warranty check. Al-Mansuri set a time. Khalil arrived with the camera in his pocket. Al-Mansori met him at the door.
This time, he did not let him in right away. He asked a few questions about the job and the company Khalil worked for. Khalil answered calmly, showed his documents, and explained the procedure. Al-Mansori let him in, but this time he stayed nearby. He did not leave the gallery. He stood and watched the work. Khalil turned on the camera in his pocket.
He checked the readings on the instruments and pretended that everything was fine. Al-Mansuri stood a few meters away. Khalil approached the container to check the temperature sensor. The camera was pointed at the sarcophagus. He recorded for a few minutes. Then he walked away and finished the check. Al-Mansuri escorted him to the exit.
This time he did not pay extra. He just said goodbye and closed the door. Khalil returned home and watched the recording. The quality was average, but it was clear enough. a wrapped figure in a container. Tubes, wires, slow movement of the chest. At one point, the eyes turned toward the camera. It was clearly visible.
Khalil saved the file to a flash drive. He made a copy. Now he had evidence. He went to the police station the next day. The officer on duty listened to his story. He asked to see the recording. Khalil showed him the video on his phone. The officer watched it and frowned. He asked a few questions. He wrote down the address of the villa.
He said he would pass the information on to the relevant department. Khalil asked what would happen next. The officer replied that he would be called in to testify if necessary. Khalil left his contact details and left. 3 days passed. No one called. Khalil began to worry. He called the station himself. He was connected to another officer.
The officer said that the information was being verified and that it would take time. Khalil asked how long. The officer did not give a specific answer. He said to wait. A week later, Khalil received a call, but it was not from the police. It was Al-Manssori. He said there was a problem with the air conditioning system in another part of the house.
He asked Khalil to come. Khalil felt uneasy. This was no coincidence. He refused saying he was busy with other jobs. Al-Mansori insisted. He offered double the pay. Khalil refused again. Al-Mansori raised his voice. He said that Khalil was obliged to finish the job he had started, that he had a contract. Khalil replied that there was no contract, only one-off calls. He hung up.
That same evening, as Khalil was returning home from work, he was stopped by a car, a black SUV with tinted windows, two men got out of the car. They were dressed in ordinary clothes, but carried themselves like security guards or bodyguards. One of them asked if he was Ahmed Khalil. Khalil confirmed that he was.
The man said they had some questions for him. He asked him to get in the car. Khalil refused. He asked who they were. The men did not answer. One took out his phone and showed him a photo. The photo was of Khalil near the Al-Manssuri villa. The man said they needed to talk about the visit.
Khalil said he had already spoken to the police. The men exchanged glances. One said that it was not a matter for the police. It was a private matter. Khalil turned around and walked back. The men did not follow him physically, but the car followed slowly behind him. Khalil quickened his pace. He turned onto a busy street. The car did not follow him.
He reached the nearest subway station and went downstairs. He checked to see if anyone was following him. He took a detour to get home. His wife asked why he was so late. Khalil said he had been delayed at work. He didn’t sleep that night. He thought about what to do. Al-Mansori clearly knew about his visit to the police.
either he had connections or the police had informed him themselves. Khalil realized that it was dangerous to act through official channels. He decided to try another approach. The next day, he found the contact details of several investigative journalists online. He wrote to a few of them. Most did not respond. One replied 3 days later. He asked for more information.
Khalil sent part of the video without specifying the exact address. The journalist replied that the material was interesting, but that more confirmation was needed. Documents, witnesses, and additional evidence were required. Khalil understood that he could not obtain more evidence without risk, but he could not leave things as they were either.
He began to watch the villa in the evenings. He parked his car at a distance and observed through binoculars. He recorded who arrived and who left. Al-Mansuri rarely left. Sometimes guests arrived in expensive cars. They stayed inside for several hours. Khalil wrote down the license plate numbers, but didn’t know what to do with them.
One evening, he saw a truck pull up to the villa. It was a medium-sized van. It stopped at the gate. Khalil couldn’t see what was being unloaded, but the van stayed there for about half an hour. Then it drove away. Khalil tried to follow it, but lost it at a traffic light. He wrote down the van’s license plate number. Later, he tried to find information about the company that owned the vehicle.
It was a private logistics firm that transported special cargo. A month had passed since his first visit to the villa. Khalil continued to gather information, but there was no progress. The journalists stopped responding to messages. The police did not get in touch. Khalil began to think that nothing would come of it, that Al-Mansori was too well protected to be stopped, that the woman in the sarcophagus would remain there until she died, if she wasn’t already dead.
Then something happened that changed the situation. Khalil received a message from an unknown number. It was a short text message in English. The message read, “You asked about the villa. I have information. Let’s meet.” Khalil did not respond immediately. He thought it might be a trap.
Maybe Al-Mansor’s people wanted to lure him out, but curiosity was stronger than caution. He replied, “Who are you?” The answer came an hour later. “I worked in the same villa. I know what’s going on there. Khalil agreed to meet in a public place. They chose a cafe in a shopping center. Khalil arrived early. He looked around. He sat down at a table by the window.
He waited. The man who arrived was young, about 25 years old. He looked Indian. He introduced himself as Rajesh. He sat down opposite Khalil. He ordered tea. He began to speak quietly. Rajesh had worked as a gardener at Al-Manssuri’s villa two years ago. His duties included caring for the grounds and the plants inside the house.
Once he was asked to help move a heavy object in the gallery. Rajes helped. He saw the containers. He asked what they were. Al-Mansuri said they were part of an art collection. Rajes asked no more questions. He continued working. A few months later, Rajes noticed something strange. Sometimes he heard sounds coming from the gallery, muffled but distinct, like moans or screams.
He thought it was the sound of the ventilation system or equipment. But one evening while cleaning the area near the gallery window, he looked inside. He saw Almansuri near one of the containers. Al-Mansori was doing something with the tubes. The figure inside the container flinched.
Rajesh stepped back from the window. Al-Mansori turned around and saw him. He came out. He asked Rajesh what he had seen. Rajes said nothing. He was just cleaning up trash. Al-Mansuri looked at him for a long time. Then he nodded. He told him to finish his work and leave. The next day, Rajes got a call from the company that hired him. They said the contract with the villa had been terminated.
His services were no longer needed. There was no explanation. Rajes tried to find out the reason. He was told that the client was dissatisfied with the quality of his work. Rajes knew that wasn’t true. He had done a good job. He realized that Al-Mansuri had gotten rid of him because he had seen too much. Rajes told Khalil this story.
He said that he had seen a mention of the villa in the news when he was searching for information on the internet. He found a forum where people were discussing strange houses in Dubai. Someone had posted about a villa with a private gallery and strange exhibits. Rajes realized it was the same villa. He started looking for more information.
He came across a post by Khalil on one of the forums where he was asking about a logistics company. Rajes connected the dots. he decided to get in touch. Khalil asked if Rajesh was ready to testify. Rajes said he was afraid, that he had a family, that he was also on a temporary visa, that he didn’t want any trouble, but he was willing to share information anonymously if it would help stop Al-Mansuri.
Khalil said he understood. He asked if Rajes had any other details that might be useful. Rajes remembered seeing a woman arrive at the villa once. She was young and looked European. She arrived in a taxi. Al-Mansuri met her. They went inside. Rajesh didn’t see her again. It was shortly before he heard the sounds from the gallery for the first time.
He didn’t remember the exact date, but it was 2 years ago in the summer. Khalil wrote down this information. He asked if Rajesh could remember anything else. Rajes shook his head. He said that was all he knew. They exchanged contact details. Rajes left first. Khalil stayed behind. He thought about what to do next.
Now he had a witness, albeit a reluctant one. But that was still not enough for an official investigation. He needed more compelling evidence. He needed to get into the gallery again. But how could he do that without risk? Khalil returned home and began looking for other ways. He studied human rights laws in the UAE.
He looked for contacts at human rights organizations. He found several international groups that dealt with similar cases. He wrote to them. He described the situation. He sent a copy of the video. He waited for a response. The response came 2 weeks later. A representative of one of the organizations wrote that the material was indeed disturbing, but that more specific data was needed to launch an official investigation.
The victim’s identity was needed. Medical reports were needed. Expert testimony was needed. The organization was willing to help, but only if the necessary evidence was gathered. Khalil realized he had reached a dead end. He had the video. He had the witness. But it wasn’t enough. The system was working against him.
Rich people were protected. Foreign workers had no voice. He almost decided to give up. He almost convinced himself that he had done everything he could. But then he remembered the eyes of that woman in the container, how they looked at him, how they asked for help without words, and he couldn’t stop.
He decided to try again, a more risky plan. Khalil decided to act directly. He contacted the Russian consulate in Dubai. He explained the situation to the officer on duty. He said that the alleged victim might be a Russian citizen. He showed the video. The employee listened carefully and asked him to leave a copy of the materials and his contact details.
Khalil expected to be asked to wait again. But this time, the reaction was different. 3 days later, he received a call from the consulate. They asked him to come in to give a detailed statement. Khalil arrived. He was met by a consular officer named Soolof and an employee from the legal department.
They asked specific questions. They wrote down his answers. They watched the video several times. They asked him to clarify details about the villa, the timing of the visits, and Al-Manssori’s behavior. Khalil answered as accurately as possible. Sov explained that several months ago, the family of a missing girl had contacted the consulate, Elizabetha Veronova, 27 years old, an influencer from Moscow.
The last contact was in July 2023. At that time, she wrote to her mother that she was in Dubai for work. After that, contact was lost. Her phone was not answering. Her social media profiles were no longer being updated. The family filed a report with the police in Russia. The Russian police sent a request to the UAE.
The local police conducted a formal investigation, found nothing and closed the case as a voluntary disappearance. The family did not give up. They contacted the consulate directly. The consulate launched its own investigation, but without any concrete leads, there was no progress. Now information has come from Khalil.
Sov said that the consulate would act through diplomatic channels. They would send an official request to the UAE police demanding that they check the villa. That the presence of consular representatives during the inspection is mandatory under international law when it comes to a possible victim from Russia.
The process took another 2 weeks. Khalil did not know the details of the negotiations, but Sokov kept him informed of the general situation. The local authorities resisted. Al-Mansuri had connections in government circles. His family was influential, but the pressure from the Russian consulate was strong.
In addition, international human rights organizations to which Khalil had previously sent information got involved. They launched a public campaign on social media. The story of a possible victim of human trafficking in Dubai began to spread in the media. As a result, the UAE authorities agreed to conduct an investigation.
On October 23rd, 2023, a group of police officers accompanied by a representative of the Russian consulate arrived at Al-Manssuri’s villa. Khalil was not there, but later learned the details from the official report and from Solof. Al-Manssori greeted the police calmly. He let them in without objection. He showed them the documents for the house.
He explained that he was an art collector and knew nothing about the missing Russian woman. The police asked to inspect the premises. Al-Mansuri agreed. He showed them around the house. He showed them the living room, kitchen, and bedrooms. When they reached the gallery, he explained that it was a private collection.
The police insisted on inspecting it. Al-Mansori opened the door. Inside the gallery, the officers saw several glass containers along the walls. Al-Mansori explained each one as a work of art. He mentioned the names of the artists and the concepts behind the works. The police approached the container where Voronova was located.
The consulate representative asked to open the sarcophagus. Al-Manssouri refused. He said that it would damage the exhibit, that the work was sealed and required special conditions. The senior officer did not argue. He ordered the container to be opened by force. A technician from the group began working on the locks and seals. Al-Mansori tried to protest.
He threatened to file complaints. The officer paid no attention. 20 minutes later, the container was opened. Inside lay a woman completely wrapped in bandages. Only her eyes were visible. A medic from the group came closer. He checked her pulse on her neck. There was a pulse, weak, but discernable. The woman was alive.
The medic immediately called an ambulance. He began to carefully remove the bandages from her face to ensure normal breathing. Al-Mansuri tried to explain the situation. He said that it was a voluntary project, that the woman had agreed to participate, that all the documents had been signed. The police did not listen.
Al-Mansori was arrested on the spot. He was charged with unlawful deprivation of liberty and causing grievous bodily harm. The ambulance arrived quickly. The medics continued to remove the bandages from Veronova. They worked carefully because they did not know what condition the body was in under the layers of material.
When they removed most of the bandages, they discovered a system of tubes and catheters connected to the body. The medics disconnected the system. They transferred Veronova to a stretcher and took her to the hospital. At the hospital, she underwent a complete examination. The results were shocking. Veronova had broken fingers on both hands and feet.
The fractures were old and had already begun to heal, but in the wrong position. Her joints were damaged by the chemicals that had been soaked into the bandages. Her muscles were atrophied from prolonged immobility. Her skin was covered with ulcers and chemical burns. Her body weight was critically low.
Her internal organs were functioning at their limit. The doctors said that Veronova had been in this condition for about 3 months. She had survived only thanks to the artificial feeding system and medications administered by Al-Manssouri. Without immediate intervention, she would have died within a few weeks. Her psychological state was critical.
Voronova was unable to speak for the first few days. She was in a state of shock. She responded only to basic stimuli. The police continued their investigation of the villa. They opened the remaining containers in the gallery. In two of them, they found mummified bodies. A forensic examination showed that these were the remains of two women.
One was European, aged between 25 and 30. The second was Asian, aged between 30 and 35. Both had been mummified using the same method as Veronova. Death was caused by exhaustion and organ failure. Based on the condition of the bodies, death occurred within the last 2 years. An extensive archive was found on Al-Manssourri’s computer, photographs and video recordings of the mummification process of all three women, detailed diary entries where he described each stage of the experiment, medical data, vital signs, reactions to
various chemicals, correspondence with suppliers of special materials and chemicals, contracts with logistics companies for the delivery of equipment. Documents on the first two victims were also found. The first woman was a Filipina named Maria Santos, 32 years old. She worked as a maid in one of Dubai’s hotels.
She disappeared in January 2022. Her family filed a report with the police, but the search yielded no results. The second woman was Ukrainian named Anna Kavalchuk. She was 28 years old. She worked as an administrator at a spa. She disappeared in August 2022. She was also listed as missing. Almansuri recruited his victims through intermediaries.
He offered them jobs or participation in art projects. He promised good pay. He invited them to his villa. He isolated them. He began the mummification process gradually so that the victim could not resist effectively. He kept detailed records of each stage. He considered himself an artist and researcher creating a new form of art.
The trial began in March 2024. Al-Mansuri pleaded not guilty. His lawyers claimed that he suffered from a mental disorder and was not aware of the consequences of his actions. They presented documents from psychiatrists who diagnosed him with severe obsessive compulsive disorder associated with an obsession with ancient Egyptian culture and mummification rituals.
The prosecution insisted that Al-Mansuri acted consciously and methodically. It presented evidence of the planning of the crimes. It showed correspondence in which he ordered special equipment and materials months before the abduction of the victims. It presented witnesses, including suppliers and workers who helped install the systems in the gallery.
Elizabetha Veronova testified via video link from Russia. She returned to her homeland after several months of treatment in a UAE hospital. She gave a detailed account of what happened. She described how Al-Mansouri lured her with promises of work. She described how he gradually moved from ordinary photoshoots to violence.
She described how he broke her fingers and fixed her joints. She described how she spent months in a sarcophagus unable to move, understanding everything that was happening. The court found Al-Manssori guilty on all counts. Murder of two people with particular cruelty, kidnapping and unlawful deprivation of liberty, causing grievous bodily harm, human trafficking.
The sentence was handed down in September 2024. Life imprisonment without the right to early release. The families of Maria Santos and Ana Kovalechuk received the bodies for burial. The remains were repatriated to the Philippines and Ukraine, respectively. Both families filed civil suits against Al-Manssouri and received compensation from his frozen assets.
Elizabeth Voronova underwent lengthy physical and psychological rehabilitation. Her broken fingers required several operations. Doctors were able to partially restore the function of her hands, but she never regained full mobility. She learned to walk again 6 months after her rescue. The psychological trauma proved to be deeper than the physical.
Veronova could not be in enclosed spaces. She suffered from nightmares. She underwent therapy with a specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder. She did not return to her work as an influencer. She deleted all her social media profiles. She refused interviews and public appearances. She lived with her family in Moscow. She gradually recovered.
Her mother said in one of her rare interviews that her daughter was learning to live again, that every day was a struggle, but she was alive and that was the main thing. Ahmed Khalil received official thanks from the Russian consulate and from Veronova’s family. Elizabetha’s mother flew to Dubai specifically to meet him in person.
She thanked him for not remaining indifferent, for risking himself for a stranger. Khalil said that he was simply doing what any normal person would do. Rajes also testified in court anonymously via video link with his face covered. His testimony helped establish the chronology of events and prove that Al-Mansuri was not doing this for the first time.
After the trial, Rajes continued to work in Dubai. Khalil sometimes communicated with him. Both tried not to dwell on what they had seen. The story received limited media coverage. The UAE authorities were not interested in widespread publicity of the case, which could damage the country’s reputation as a safe place for expats and tourists.
Several international publications ran articles, but without sensational headlines or details. The Russian media also wrote about it in a restrained manner, focusing more on the successful rescue of the citizen than on the details of the crime. Al-Mansor’s villa was confiscated by the state. The art collection was sold at auction.
The money went to a fund to help victims of human trafficking. The building stood empty for a long time. Then it was demolished. A residential complex was built on the site. The case was officially closed in December 2024. The police conducted an additional investigation to determine whether there were any other victims.
They checked all cases of missing women in Dubai over the past 5 years. They found several suspicious cases but were unable to establish any direct links to Almansuri. The investigation concluded that there were three victims. Two died, one survived. Elizabetha Veronova is still alive. She lives quietly. She does not give interviews.
Relatives say she is slowly recovering. She is learning to enjoy simple things. Walking in the park, drinking coffee in the morning, talking to people. Things that used to seem ordinary now require effort. But she is fighting. And that is already a victory. Fared also is serving a sentence in a maximum security prison in the UAE. He does not give interviews.
He does not communicate with the outside world. According to prison officials, he keeps to himself. He spends his time in his cell. He reads books on the history of ancient Egypt. The prison psychologist noted in his report that the prisoner still considers himself an artist, not a criminal. That he shows no signs of remorse.
The story remains a warning that wealth and influence can create zones of impunity, that crimes against people can be committed under the guise of art, that it is important to pay attention to oddities and not ignore warning signs. Khalil saved a life because he did not remain indifferent. Many others saw something suspicious but remained silent.
The difference between life and death sometimes lies in one person who decides to act. Martha Rivero died on November 25th, 2023 in an underground bunker of a luxurious residence in the desert outside Dubai with a broken neck and her vocal cords cut out. Her killer, Shik Rashid Iben Khaled Al- Nahayan, collected human voices, and Marta became the 24th exhibit in his private gallery of horrors.
The story began a month earlier when the singer from Seville received a letter that seemed like a gift from fate. On October 23rd, 2023, Marta received an email from a certain fisel al-Maktum who introduced himself as Shik Rasheed’s personal assistant and said that his employer wanted to invite the Spanish singer to a private concert at his residence for a fee of €200,000 for a performance lasting no more than 2 hours.
Marta was 31 years old and had been singing flamco in the bars of Seville since she was 16, but she only became widely known two years ago after an article in a Madrid newspaper in which a music critic wrote that her voice sounded as if it were made of molten gold and broken glass at the same time. After the publication, Marta got an agent.
A small contract with a label and invitations to festivals in Barcelona and Paris. But 200,000 for one evening was more than she had earned in the entire previous year. Her agent Carlos checked the authenticity of the offer and found out that Shik Rashid really existed. a representative of a side branch of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, owner of a chain of hotels, known for his eccentric hobbies, about whom the press wrote almost nothing, but several articles in specialized publications mentioned his collection of vintage recording equipment, which
included an original Edison photograph and the only working example of a German magneettoon K4 tape recorder from 1938. Carlos saw nothing suspicious, explaining to Marta that rich people often invited artists to private events for huge sums of money because privacy was expensive. And on October 28th, Marta signed the contract and a business class ticket to Dubai was purchased for November 15th.
She arrived in the evening of the same day and was met at the airport by Fisizel himself, a tall man in his 50s, wearing an immaculate white dish dasha with a perfect British accent, who escorted the singer to a black Mercedes Maybach with tinted windows and drove her along a road that took them far beyond Dubai in an hour, first along the coast and then into the desert.
Martha began to feel nervous about how far they were traveling from the city. But Fisizel explained that the shake’s residence was in a secluded location because his employer valued silence and believed that the noise of the city interfered with the proper perception of music. And this explanation seemed reasonable to Martha, although a slight uneasiness remained.
Entering through a tall gate with security guards, they proceeded along a marble paved road through gardens with palm trees and fountains that seemed impossible in the middle of the desert until they reached the residence itself. A three-story building of sandstone and glass that combined modern architecture with traditional Islamic ornamentation.
Fisizel led Martha inside where the air smelled of sandalwood and rose water and the floors were covered with handmade mosaics. Then took her up to the second floor to the guest apartments which were larger than her apartment in Seville, a huge four poster bed, a marble bathroom with a jacuzzi, and a terrace overlooking the illuminated garden.
The shake’s assistant informed her that the performance would take place the following day at 8:00 p.m. and that until then the singer was welcome to use the spa and swimming pool. He then bowed and left, leaving Martha alone with a growing sense of isolation. She unpacked her suitcase, took a shower, and went out onto the terrace where a huge moon hung over the desert, and the silence was so complete that Martha could hear her own breathing and nothing else.
No sounds of the city, cars, people, only the wind in the palm leaves. And this absolute silence made her feel uneasy, as if the whole world had disappeared, leaving her in a beautiful but isolated cage. On November 16th, Martha woke up at 10:00 in the morning and found breakfast waiting for her on the terrace.
fresh fruit, pastries, coffee, all impeccably served, although she hadn’t heard anyone bring the food. After breakfast, she went down to the pool, swam, sunbathed, but never saw a single person. The entire complex seemed empty, as if it had been built especially for her. And this feeling caused increasing anxiety, which Martha tried to suppress by reminding herself of the €200,000 fee.
At 3:00 in the afternoon, Fisizel arrived and took her to the concert hall, which was located in the west wing of the residence and was impressive for its acoustics. The walls were covered with special panels. The floor was laid with polished wood, and the high dome with stained glass windows let in soft light, creating an almost sacred atmosphere.
In the center of the hall stood a single chair, massive leather throne-like, and Fisizel explained that his employer would sit there alone with no other listeners, just the singer and the shake. Martha felt a chill at this explanation because she was used to singing in front of hundreds of people, and a single listener seemed strange, almost intimate.
But she did a sound check and realized that the acoustics allowed her to sing without a microphone. Her voice filled the hall, bounced off the walls, and returned amplified and purified. It was like singing in a cathedral, only better. And Martha decided that this performance would be special. At exactly 8:00 in the evening, Shik Rasheed entered the hall.
And Marta immediately felt a strange energy emanating from him. He was about 60 years old with a neatly trimmed gray beard and black eyes that showed not just attention but the intense concentration of a predator studying its prey before the pounce. He was dressed in traditional white clothing and moved slowly with dignity.
He nodded to Martha, sat down in a chair, closed his eyes, and said one word in English. Begin. There was such authority in his voice that Martha had no desire to delay. She sang the program she had been preparing for a whole month. Classic flamco, modern arrangements, two original songs in Spanish, singing about love and loss, passion and pain, her voice soaring to the dome, trembling, breaking, regaining strength.
Martha put her whole soul into this performance because she felt that this man understood music differently than ordinary listeners. He didn’t just listen. He absorbed every note, every vibration, and it mesmerized her so much that she sang better than ever before in her life, forgetting about the strangeness of the situation, about her anxiety, about being in an isolated residence in the middle of the desert with an unfamiliar millionaire.
When she finished the last song, there was such a deep silence in the hall that Martha could hear her own heartbeat, and only after a few seconds did the shake open his eyes, a strange smile on his face, enthusiastic and sad at the same time, as if he had received something precious, but already knew that he would not be able to keep it in its original form.
He slowly rose from his chair, came closer, and Martha felt her whole body tense with an intuitive sense of danger. But she smiled, expecting compliments and gratitude for her performance. The shake said quietly that her voice was perfect, that such voices were born once in a generation, perhaps once in a century, and that he had heard many great singers in his lifetime, but no one sounded like her.
Then he added, looking her straight in the eye with an expression of absolute conviction that he wanted that voice to stay with him forever, and there was nothing metaphorical in his tone. He meant it literally, like a man accustomed to getting everything he wanted. Martha smiled uncertainly, not understanding what he was getting at, and replied something about recording the concert so she could always listen to it again.
But the shake shook his head with the expression of a patient teacher looking at an uncomprehending student. He explained slowly, enunciating each word that recordings are dead. They only capture sound, but not the live vibration, not the energy of the moment, not the very essence of the voice, and that he does not collect sounds or recordings.
He collects the voices themselves, the physical organs that create these wonderful sounds. Martha did not immediately understand the meaning of what was said. She just stood there, the smile slowly slipping from her face while her brain feverishly tried to reinterpret the shake’s words into some safe, reasonable context.
But then he clapped his hands, and two people in medical masks and gloves entered the room, one of them holding a syringe, and reality hit Martha with such force that she couldn’t breathe for a moment. She backed up against the wall and asked in a trembling voice what was happening. And the shake replied softly, almost affectionately, that she shouldn’t worry, that it wouldn’t hurt, that when she woke up, the operation would be over and everything would be behind her.
Martha screamed and rushed for the exit, but the door was locked. And as she jerked the handle, two men had already grabbed her arms. She struggled, scratched, and screamed at the top of her lungs, using her precious voice for the last time. But they were much stronger, holding her professionally, not letting her escape.
One of them stabbed her in the neck with something, and Martha felt a sharp burning sensation, then dizziness. Her legs buckled, and the last thing she saw before falling into darkness was the shake’s face, looking at her with the deep satisfaction of a collector who had found a rare exhibit. Martha woke up in pain, her throat burning as if it were being burned from the inside with a red hot iron, each breath feeling like sharp needles.
And when she instinctively tried to scream, only a horse gurgling sound came out of her throat, like the death rattle of a drowning man. She sat up with a jerk on the narrow metal bed. And the first thing she realized was that she was not in the luxurious apartments on the second floor, but in a small concrete room with no windows, lit by cold fluorescent light, with bare walls, a steel sink in the corner, and a toilet.
There was nothing else there, not even a chair. Martha grabbed her throat with both hands and felt a gauze bandage soaked with something wet under her fingers. She tore off the bandage with trembling hands and felt a cut under her fingers. A neat surgical suture running horizontally across the front of her neck, held together with stitches, and in the center of the cut was a small plastic tube about the diameter of a pencil.
She tried to breathe through her nose and mouth, but the air did not flow in the usual way. Instead, she felt it whistling through the tube in her neck, and the realization that she was not breathing as she had all her life caused such a strong panic attack that Martha stopped breathing altogether for a few seconds, frozen with her mouth open, trying to understand what had been done to her.
She tried to scream again, tensing all the muscles in her throat, trying to squeeze out some kind of sound. But instead of a scream, there was only a quiet hiss of air coming out through the tube. No voice, no vocal cords trembling and creating sound. Nothing. Martha crawled on all fours to the sink, pulled herself up, looked into the tiny metal mirror above it, and saw her face deathly pale, her eyes wide with horror, blood caked in the corners of her mouth, and her neck with this monstrous tube sticking out of a fresh incision.
She ran her fingers around the tube, felt it go deep inside, right into her trachea, and realized it was a tracheosttomy, a permanent opening for breathing that is made in people after serious throat or larynx surgery. Her voice disappeared, and this realization hit Martha with such force that she collapsed onto the cold concrete floor and began to sob silently, her body shaking with spasms, tears streaming down her cheeks, her mouth open in a silent scream.
But no sound came out, only the whistling of air through the tube in her neck, which became intermittent from her sobs. She had been singing since she was 16. Her voice was everything. Her work, her passion, her reason for living, a way to express emotions that could not be expressed in words. And now that was gone.
She had been turned into a living corpse, capable of breathing and moving, but deprived of the most important thing. The door opened with a metallic clang, and Fisizel entered, but he no longer looked like a polite assistant with perfect manners. His face was cold and professional, like that of a prison guard, accustomed to dealing with people deprived of their rights and voices.
He looked at Martha, lying on the floor in a pool of tears, without any sympathy, rather with slight irritation that she had woken up earlier than expected, and was making unnecessary noise with her silent sobs. He handed her a glass of water and two white pills, saying that the doctor had warned of possible discomfort after the operation.
and that these pills would help. Martha hit the glass from below. It flew out of Fisel’s hands and shattered on the floor. Shards and water scattered across the concrete. And she tried to yell at him, demand an explanation, but only indistinct guttural sounds came out of her throat. Something between a weeze and a moan, and Fisel didn’t even flinch, just looked at her with the expression of someone watching a predictable tantrum.
He explained in a calm business-like tone that her vocal cords had been removed during a procedure performed by a qualified surgeon with extensive experience in such operations, that part of her larynx had also been removed, and that a permanent tracheosttomy tube had been inserted, allowing her to breathe without using her normal airways.
Fisel added that Martha could swallow food and water, breathe, move, and live a relatively normal life, but she would never be able to speak or sing again because the physical organs responsible for producing sound had been irreversibly removed from her body. Martha slowly got up from the floor, holding on to the sink, her legs trembling, her head pounding.
But through the shock and horror, rage began to break through. Pure primal rage at this man, at the shake, at everyone who had participated in this monstrous crime. She took a step toward Fisel, her hands clenched into fists. She wanted to throw herself at him, hit him, scratch him, do anything to inflict pain in response to the pain she had suffered.
But Fisizel raised his hand in a warning gesture and said coldly that if she tried to be aggressive, they would simply tie her up and feed her through a tube. Then he continued as if reading a boring report that his employer had preserved her voice with the utmost care. The concert had been recorded on the highest quality analog tape using equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The recording was perfect without the slightest distortion, and the shake had already listened to it three times. In addition, Fisel explained, Martha’s vocal cords themselves had been removed during surgery and placed in a special formaldahhide-based preservative solution. They are stored in a glass vial in the shake’s personal collection along with other specimens, each labeled with the owner’s name, date of birth, date of acquisition, and a brief description of the uniqueness of the voice. Other specimens.
These words sounded so mundane as if Fisizel were talking about stamps or coins, and Martha looked up at him with a mixture of horror and disbelief. Was she not the first? Had this happened before to other people? Fisizel nodded as if he had read her thoughts and said that yes, she was not the first and would not be the last.
His employer had been collecting unique voices for 12 years since 1911 when he first heard the soprano of an Italian opera singer and realized that he wanted to own not just a recording but the very source of this perfection. There are now 23 exhibits in the collection, Fisizel explained.
Each carefully selected singers, a boy soprano from the Vienna Boys Choir, a jazz vocalist from New Orleans, a Tibetan monk with a unique throat singing technique, and Martha became the 24th. He recounted this calmly without emotion, as if describing the process of collecting rare butterflies. And Martha listened, unable to look away.
her brain refusing to believe the reality of what was happening. But the pain in her throat and the whistling of air through the tube were all too real. Fisel explained that all the previous victims were kept here in the underground part of the residence. Each in their own room where they were fed, cared for, and monitored for their health.
But they would never see the outside world again. never be able to tell anyone what had happened to them because they had no voice and written messages were easy to control. He added that several people had tried to escape in the first months after the operation, but all had been caught by security guards on the grounds of the residence, after which they had been placed in solitary confinement without the right to communicate with other prisoners, and in the end they had resigned themselves to their fate.
Fisel turned toward the door, but before leaving, he turned back and added in an almost friendly tone that Marta would be brought food three times a day, soft food that was easy to swallow with a tracheosttomy, and that a nurse would come once a day to check her stitches and flush the tube to prevent infection.
He said she shouldn’t try to escape because the complex was guarded by armed men around the clock. The fence was 4 m high. There were cameras and motion sensors around the perimeter, and the nearest settlement was 70 km away in the desert, where the temperature reached 45° during the day. In her current condition, Fisizel explained, with an open wound on her neck and a tracheosttomy that needed to be kept clean at all times, she would not last a single day in the desert and would die of dehydration, infection, or
simply suffocation if the tube became clogged with sand. The door closed behind him, and Martha heard the electronic lock click. A heavy and final sound that meant she was now a prisoner. She sank down onto the bed, her hands rising mechanically to her throat, her fingers carefully tracing the tube, examining the seam, and one thought spinning in her head.
This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t have really happened. In a few hours, she would wake up in her apartment on the second floor. It was just a nightmare caused by pre-performance stress. But the pain was too real. And when she tried again to make any sound, even a quiet moan, only a hiss of air came out of her throat, and reality finally hit her.
Her voice was gone, and with it her whole former life. The following days turned into a blur of pain, despair, and the gradual realization that there would be no salvation. Martha was kept in the same concrete room. And twice a day they brought her food, liquid soups, mashed potatoes, yogurt, anything she could swallow without effort, without straining her damaged throat.
And she ate mechanically, without appetite, simply because her instinct for survival was stronger than her desire to die. Once a day, a nurse in a mask came in, a silent middle-aged woman who checked the stitches, washed the tracheosttomy with saline solution, changed the bandage, and left without saying a word, without meeting Martha’s gaze, as if she were not a person, but an inanimate object requiring technical maintenance.
Martha tried to communicate with gestures, scratched words on the wall with her fingernails, laid out letters with breadcrumbs, begging for help. But the nurse ignored all these attempts, cleaned up the crumbs, washed away the scratches with a damp cloth, and continued her work with the indifference of a robot.
Once Martha grabbed the nurse’s hand when she bent down to check the stitches, trying to get her attention, to make her look her in the eye, to acknowledge her human existence. But the woman just jerked her hand away, stepped back toward the door, and said in broken English that if Martha touched the staff again, she would be fed through a tube while restrained, and the nurse never came again.
Instead, a man began to come who worked even more silently and distantly. On November 23rd, 8 days after the operation, when the wound had begun to heal and the pain had become less acute, turning into a constant dull throbbing, the door opened and Fisizel entered with an unusual proposal. He said that his employer wanted to show Martha the collection so that she could understand the scale of the project she had become a part of, see her place among other selected voices, and realize that her sacrifice made sense in the context of
this great collection of unique sounds. Martha did not move from her bed, seeing no point in going anywhere, but Fisizel added coldly that if she refused, she would spend the rest of her life in this room without the right to even go out into the corridor. Whereas cooperation could bring certain privileges, such as access to the common area where other prisoners were held, the opportunity to see sunlight, at least through the windows of the upper floors during accompanied walks.
Martha stood up because the alternative, spending years in a windowless concrete box, seemed worse than seeing the collection of horrors Fisizel had mentioned. They walked down a long corridor of bare concrete lit by sparse fluorescent lights lined on both sides with metal doors with electronic locks behind each of which Martha realized was a person deprived of their voice.
They descended another level and Fisizel explained that the residence had three underground floors. The top floor for technical rooms and staff, the middle floor for the collection, and the bottom floor for the medical ward where operations and rehabilitation therapy were performed. They stopped in front of a massive dark wood door that did not fit in with the utilitarian concrete aesthetic of the rest of the basement, and Fisel placed his hand on the scanner.
The door opened silently, letting them into a room that took Martha’s breath away. It was a gallery with walls finished in wood paneling and soundabsorbing materials, lighting soft and warm, like in an expensive museum. And along the walls were glass display cases with backlighting, each containing a transparent flask with a yellowish liquid in which two small strips of pinkish fabric floated. Vocal cords.
Martha approached the nearest display case and read the inscription engraved on a copper plate. Julia Morrison, soprano, born March 3rd, 1985. Acquired June 15th, 2011. Uniqueness of voice lies in four octave range and ability to reach third octave without apparent effort. Martha moved on to the next display case.
Thomas Winer, boy soprano, born December 20th, 2001, acquired April 8th, 2013. Uniqueness lies in the crystal clarity of his voice and angelic tamber characteristic of vianese choristers. She walked along the entire wall, reading the names, dates, and descriptions, and with each plaque, a feeling of nauseating horror grew inside her.
There were singers from Italy, France, Russia, Brazil, Japan, people of different ages and nationalities, united by only one thing. They had extraordinary voices, and now those voices floated in formaldahhide like the trophies of a mad collector. At the end of the gallery stood an empty display case with a label already in place. Marta Rivero, Medzo Soprano, born July 12th, 1992.
Acquired November 16th, 2023. The uniqueness of the voice lies in a rare combination of strength and fragility, the ability to convey deep emotions through microonal changes in timber. The voice is described as molten gold and broken glass. Martha stood in front of this display case, reading the description of her own voice in the past tense, as if she were already dead.
And indeed, the voice was dead, and what remained was just a shell, devoid of the most important thing. The gallery door opened, and Shik Rasheed entered, dressed in traditional black clothing, his face expressing the deep satisfaction of a man contemplating his greatest achievement. He slowly walked around the gallery, stopping at each display case, telling Marta the story of each acquisition, how he first heard the voice, what struck him, how he arranged the meeting and the operation, and he spoke about it with
such enthusiasm and warmth as if he were talking about his beloved children or precious works of art. He explained that collecting recordings did not satisfy him because recordings were dead reflections of a living phenomenon. Whereas owning the physical source of the sound gave him a sense of true ownership, the knowledge that these voices would never be heard publicly again, that he was the last person to hear them in their full power.
The shake approached Martha’s display case, placed his hand on the glass, and said that her voice was special even among this select collection, that he had listened to the recording of her concert dozens of times, and each time discovered new nuances, new layers of emotional depth. He added that he understood her anger and despair, but that in time she would realize the honor of being part of something greater than an ordinary singing career, which would have ended in 20 years with the loss of her voice due to age. Whereas now her
voice was preserved in perfect condition forever, and thousands of years later, when her name is forgotten by all but a few specialists, her vocal cords will still exist as evidence of her gift. Martha listened to this nonsense and felt not just rage growing inside her, but a cold, focused hatred she had never felt before.
She realized that this man was completely insane, that he sincerely believed in the nobility of his project, that no arguments would reach him, because in his world view, he was not a kidnapper and torturer, but a guardian of beauty, saving unique voices from inevitable destruction by time. Fisizel signaled that the tour was over and they returned upstairs.
But as Martha was led down the corridor back to her cell, she memorized every turn, every door, every detail of the layout, because the decision had already matured in her mind. If she couldn’t get her voice back, if she couldn’t escape and tell the world about this horror, then at least she would try to destroy the one who had done it.
On the night of November 24th, Martha lay on her bed and waited. Fisizel had mentioned during the tour that the shake often came down to the gallery late at night to listen to his collection in silence and solitude, and Martha decided that this was her only chance. Around midnight, she heard footsteps in the hallway, heavy and slow, recognizable as the shake’s gate.
Then the footsteps stopped. He had entered the gallery. As expected, Martha got up, went to the door, and began to bang on it with her hands, scratching the metal, making as much noise as she could without using her voice. And after a few minutes, the door opened, and a security guard stood in the doorway.
A young man in uniform with an irritated expression on his face. Martha fell to the floor, grabbed her throat, pretended to be choking, and rolled around on the floor in convulsions. The guard was confused, not understanding what was happening, and bent down to check on her.
At that moment, Martha grabbed the only hard object in the cell from the table, the metal bowl in which food was brought, and hit the guard on the head with all her might. The blow was glancing, not very strong, but unexpected, and the guard staggered, dropping his radio, and Martha jumped out into the corridor and ran towards the gallery, her bare feet slapping against the concrete, air whistling through her tracheosttomy.
But she ran fast, fueled by despair and hatred. She burst into the gallery where Shik Rasheed was standing in front of one of the display cases wearing headphones listening to a recording and unaware of her approach and Martha threw herself at him from behind hitting him in the back. He fell. His headphones fell off.
He tried to get up but she jumped on him, started hitting him in the face with her hands, scratching him, aiming for his eyes. The shake was older and physically weaker, but he was a man and quickly realized what was happening. Grabbed Martha by the wrists, pushed her away. They both got to their feet.
She lunged at him again, but he dodged. And then Martha grabbed one of the display cases, tried to lift it to throw it at the shake, but the display case was too heavy. So instead, she broke the glass with her hand, grabbed a flask containing someone’s vocal cords, and threw it at the shake. The flask smashed against the wall.
Formaldahhide spilled onto the floor, and the cords fell onto the parquet. The shake let out a sound like the roar of a wounded animal, rushed to the broken flask, fell to his knees, and tried to pick up the vocal cords, but they slipped through his fingers, and that gave Martha a second’s advantage.
She ran up, kicked him in the side. He fell sideways, and she jumped on him, trying to clamp her hands around his throat, and strangle him, but she didn’t have enough strength. The shake rolled over, threw her off, stood up, and his face no longer bore the calm of a collector. Only the animal rage of a man whose greatest treasure had been destroyed.
He grabbed Martha by the neck with one hand, lifted her up, pressed her against the wall, and she scratched his hands, trying to break free, but he was much stronger than he looked. He looked her in the eyes, and Martha saw that he was going to kill her, not as punishment or in self-defense, but as the destruction of a damaged exhibit that had lost its value.
And in the next second, he turned her around, grabbed her by the head, and jerked her sharply to the side. Martha heard a crack, felt a sharp pain piercing her entire body from neck to toe, then numbness. Her legs gave way, and she fell to the floor, unable to move her arms or legs. The shake stood over her, breathing heavily, adjusting his clothes, then called.
Fisel, who appeared a few seconds later with two guards, looked at Martha lying on the floor, at the broken display case, at the spilled formaldahhide. Fisel asked what to do, and the shake replied coldly that it should be reported as an accident. The Spanish singer had fallen in the bathroom, hit her head, broken her neck. a tragic accident during a private visit and the body would be returned to the family with appropriate compensation and condolences.
Marta lay on the floor unable to move, but she could breathe. She could hear. She could see them discussing her death and she understood that she was dying slowly, the paralysis rising higher, her breathing becoming shallow, the air struggling to pass through the tracheosttomy, and in a few minutes she would suffocate. The shake ordered the body to be taken to a soundproof room on the lower level where operations had previously been performed, a room that had recently been converted into a private archive of records and left there for a day while
he decided how to stage the accident so that there would be no questions from the Spanish authorities. The guards lifted Marta. She was still alive, her eyes moving, watching what was happening. And Fisel noticed this and told the shake that she was still breathing. But the shake replied indifferently, that it would not be for long.
A fracture of the cervical vertebrae at this level meant gradual paralysis of the respiratory muscles. She would die on her own within an hour, maybe two. So there was no need to speed up the process and leave additional traces of violence on her body. The guards carried Martha downstairs to a small room with perfect soundproofing, laid her on a metal table that had previously been used as an operating table, and left her alone, locking the door behind them.
There was a sound system in the room, and someone from the staff, apparently on the shakes’s orders, turned on a recording. Martha’s last concert, her performance at the gallery 8 days ago, and her own voice filled the room, clear, strong, alive, singing about love and loss in Spanish. Marta lay on the table, paralyzed, unable even to turn her head, staring at the white ceiling, listening to her voice coming from the speakers.
And it was the crulest torture imaginable, to die to the sounds of what had been taken from her, to hear her singing. Knowing she would never sing another note, her breathing became heavier and heavier. The air passed through the tracheosttomy in jerks. Less and less oxygen entered her lungs.
Darkness crept into the corners of her vision, but her consciousness still held, and Martha heard her voice soar to a high note. Hold it. Release it. Move on to the next phrase. The recording lasted 2 hours. It was put on repeat. And when Martha died about an hour after being placed on the table, suffocating from respiratory muscle paralysis, her voice still echoed in the room, singing and singing in complete darkness in a soundproof dungeon where no one could hear it except the dead singer on the operating table. On November 27th, Marta Rivero’s
body was delivered to the Spanish authorities with an official apology from representatives of the Al- Nayan family. an explanation of a tragic accident in the bathroom and compensation to the family in the amount of €500,000. An autopsy performed in Seville confirmed death from a broken neck, but also found evidence of recent surgery on the larynx, removal of the vocal cords, and a tracheotomy, which raised questions for the pathologist.
Marta’s family demanded an investigation, claiming that their daughter was healthy when she flew to Dubai and should not have had any throat surgery. But the United Arab Emirates authorities refused to cooperate with the investigation, citing the diplomatic immunity of members of the ruling families and the lack of evidence of a crime.
The case was closed after 3 months as an accident and the Spanish media wrote several articles about the mysterious death of the talented singer in Dubai. But the story quickly disappeared from the news, replaced by more recent scandals. Marta’s agent Carlos tried to attract the attention of international human rights organizations.
But without concrete evidence and without access to the shake’s residence, nothing could be done. And in the end, he also gave up, leaving only a short post on social media saying that talented artists should be careful when accepting invitations from wealthy strangers in countries where the laws do not work the same way as in Europe.
Shik Rashid continued to build his collection with the 25th exhibit being a tenor from South Africa acquired in May 2024 and the 26th being a contralto from Germany in August of the same year and none of them were ever found alive or dead again. They simply disappeared after private performances in the residences of wealthy collectors.
Their cases remained unsolved, their voices silenced forever. The display case with Martha Rivero’s vocal cords still stands in Shik Rashid’s gallery, the glass flask filled with fresh formaldahhide, two small strips of pinkish fabric floating in the yellowish liquid, and a copper plaque stating that this voice was one of the most beautiful in the collection, a voice that sounded like molten gold and broken glass and which now belongs to only one person forever.
In June 2022, 23-year-old Selene Dubois from Lion disappeared under circumstances that initially seemed promising to her family. The last message her mother, Isabelle, received read, “Mom, I’m safe. The foundation helped me leave. I’ll tell you everything soon. I love you.” This message came via Messenger at 3:00 p.m.
on June 23rd, and it was the last word from Seline. Her phone was turned off 10 minutes after the message was sent and never connected to the network again. Isabelle tried to call her, sent dozens of messages, and contacted her daughter’s friends, but no one knew anything. A week passed, then two, and when it became clear that Seline was indeed missing, the family contacted the police, setting in motion a story that ultimately led to the uncovering of one of the most cynical and brutal human trafficking schemes in modern Europe.
Selene was an ordinary middle-class girl who grew up in a loving family in a quiet neighborhood of Lion. After graduating from high school, she enrolled in university to study international relations. Dreaming of a career in diplomacy or international organizations, she was interested in the cultures of different countries and traveled extensively.
Her friends described her as an intelligent, sociable, and somewhat naive girl who always saw the best in people and believed in goodness. She was active on social media where she shared photos from her travels, her thoughts on world events, and her plans for the future. She had about 3,000 followers, mostly friends, acquaintances, and people who shared her interest in travel and culture.
In March 2022, Selene graduated from university with honors and decided to take a year off before entering graduate school to work, save money, and as she said, see the world beyond textbooks. She got a job as a waitress at a popular restaurant in the center of Lion, working evenings and weekends, and during the day she did translation work for a small agency.
The pay was modest, but Seline was enthusiastic and had plans. She wanted to save enough money by the summer to travel to Southeast Asia for 3 months, visit Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and then return and start her master’s program in Paris. In April 2022, Selene met Antoine Bernard, a 38-year-old entrepreneur who was a regular at the restaurant where she worked.
Antoine was always impeccably dressed, arrived in an expensive car, left generous tips, and behaved like a well-mannered, successful man who knew his worth. He started talking to Selene, asked about her plans, told her about his business trips around the world, and gradually they became acquainted. Antoine introduced himself as the owner of a luxury goods import company and said that he often traveled to the Middle East, Asia, and Europe to purchase goods for wealthy clients.
He was charming, attentive, and importantly for Seline, seemed genuinely interested in her life and dreams rather than just trying to impress her with his wealth. By May, they had started dating. Antoine took Selene to expensive restaurants, drove her to Provence for weekends, and gave her gifts that were not too expensive so as not to embarrass her, but thoughtful enough to show his interest in her interests, books about countries she wanted to visit, ethnicstyle jewelry, tickets to contemporary art exhibitions.
Seline was happy. Her friends were a little jealous, saying that she was lucky to have met such an interesting and successful man. True, some noted that the age difference was significant and that it was strange that a man like Antoine was still unmarried and did not have a serious relationship, but Seline dismissed these doubts, explaining that he was simply very busy with business and had not yet met the right person.
At the end of May, Antoine asked Seline to accompany him on a business trip to Dubai. He said that there would be meetings with suppliers, but they would also have free time to see the city, sunbathe on the beach, and stay in a luxury hotel for a few days. Seline was hesitant. She had never been to the Middle East, and although the idea seemed tempting, something inside her made her doubt.
She talked to her mother and Isabelle, although happy that her daughter had met someone who treated her well, expressed caution, asking Seline to be careful and not to rush into such serious steps. In the end, Selene decided to agree, but on the condition that the trip would be short, only 4 days from June 20th to 24, and that she would stay in constant contact with her family.
On June 20th, 2022, Seline and Antoine flew to Dubai on an Emirates flight from Leon Santexuperi Airport. Seline was in high spirits, taking photos at the airport, messaging her friends, and sharing her impressions of the business class cabin where Antoine had bought tickets. They arrived in Dubai late in the evening, local time, and were met by a driver with a sign who took them to the luxurious Burj Alarab, the famous seven-star hotel in the shape of a sail.
Standing on an artificial island, Selene was amazed by the luxury of the room, the view of the Persian Gulf, and the service that anticipated every desire of the guests. She called her mother on video chat, showed her the room, said that everything was wonderful, that Antoine was taking care of her, and that she was happy.
The first two days were like a fairy tale. Antoine did go to business meetings, but they were short and they spent most of their time together, walking around shopping malls, going up to the Burj Khalifa observation deck, sailing along the coast on a yacht, dining in restaurants with views of fountains and skyscrapers. Seline kept in touch with her family, sending photos, and everything seemed perfect.
But on the evening of June 22nd, something changed. Antoine told Seline that he had an important meeting at a party on the yacht of one of his main clients, a wealthy shake, and that it would be good if she went with him. Her presence would help make an impression and strengthen business relations. Selene didn’t really want to go to a party with strangers, but she agreed to support Antoine.
The party was held on a huge yacht mored in a private marina. When they arrived, there were already many guests there, men in expensive suits and traditional Arab clothing, women in evening gowns, most of whom were clearly professional models or escorts. Music was playing, champagne and cocktails were flowing, and the atmosphere was relaxed and even a little loose.
Seline felt out of place, especially when she noticed that many of the men were openly staring at her, and Antoine, instead of staying close to her, was engrossed in conversation with a group of Arabs in business suits and paid little attention to her. After an hour at the party, Seline already wanted to leave. One of the guests, an elderly man with a heavy accent, who introduced himself as a friend of the Shakes’s family, persistently tried to talk to her, offered her drinks, put his hand on her waist, and when she politely refused,
and walked away, he followed her. Seline found Antoine and said she wanted to go back to the hotel because she felt uncomfortable. Antoine was clearly annoyed, saying that they couldn’t leave so early, that it would be rude, and asked her to be patient a little longer. Seline agreed, but with every passing minute, she felt a growing sense of unease.
She went out on deck to get some fresh air, took out her phone, and texted her friend in lion. I want to get out of here. Something’s wrong. These people are strange. At that moment, a woman approached her and introduced herself as Ila, an employee of the international charity Sanctuary Ubes or Spaseni as it was called in Russian.
Ila was an elegant woman in her 40s, impeccably dressed, speaking with a slight accent, possibly Lebanese or Egyptian. She said she noticed that Seline looked confused and uncomfortable, and asked if everything was okay. Seline, grateful for the concern, admitted that she wanted to leave, but her companion insisted that she stay.
Ila nodded understandingly and said, “You know, I often see girls in your situation at events like this. Many come here with men who promise them paradise, but then reality turns out to be completely different. If you need help or just advice, here’s my business card. Our foundation helps women who find themselves in difficult situations here in the Middle East.
Selene took the card which read Sanctuary Foundation helping women find freedom with a UAE phone number and email address. She thanked Ila, put the card in her purse and returned to the hall where Antoine was already looking for her. Clearly unhappy that she had left. They stayed at the party for about two more hours, during which time Selene caught the glances of several men who were discussing something while looking in her direction, and once saw Antoine talking seriously with an elderly Arab man in a white dish dasha, both of them
looking at her. When they finally left, it was already past midnight. And on the way back to the hotel, Antoine was silent and tense, completely unlike the charming and caring man she had known for the past 2 months. Back in her room, Seline took a shower and went to bed, but she couldn’t sleep.
Something about that party, about Antoine’s behavior, about the looks on those people’s faces, made her feel truly afraid. She took out her phone and started searching for information about the Sanctuary Foundation. Their professionally designed website stated that the organization had been in existence since 2015, helping women who had suffered from domestic violence, human trafficking, and exploitation in the Middle East, organizing their evacuation to safe countries, and providing legal and psychological assistance.
The website featured photos of happy women, success stories, thank you letters, and information about partners and donors, including several large international organizations and individuals. Everything looked completely legitimate and trustworthy. Seline calmed down a little, thinking that perhaps she had just been overexited and fell asleep.
On the morning of June 23rd, Antoine was cold and distant. At breakfast, he told Seline that he had meetings all day and that she could spend her time at the hotel spa or on the beach and that they would have dinner together in the evening. Seline agreed, glad to have some time alone to collect her thoughts.
After Antoine left, she tried to call her mother, but the connection kept breaking up, either because of internet problems at the hotel or for some other reason. She went to the beach, but couldn’t relax, her thoughts constantly returning to the party the night before. By lunchtime, she had decided that she wanted to leave Dubai earlier than planned, that she no longer felt safe with Antoine, and that she needed to find a way to return home on her own.
Selene returned to her room around 2:00 in the afternoon and found Antoine already there along with the two men she had seen yesterday on the yacht. The atmosphere was tense and when she entered all three turned to her and there was something in their eyes that made her blood run cold. Antoine said with a fake smile, “Seline, meet my partners.
They need to ask you a few questions.” One of the men, a large middle-aged Arab, approached her and took her by the arm, his grip tight and painful. Seline tried to break free and screamed, but the second man quickly covered her mouth with his hand, and they dragged her back into the room, closing the door behind them.
Seline never told the whole story of what happened next, even after she was rescued. But from her statement to the police, it became known that she was held in the room for several hours, told to calm down and listen, and threatened that if she did not cooperate, she would never see her family again. Antoine, dropping his charming businessman persona, explained the real situation to her.
He worked for a network that supplied women to wealthy clients in the Middle East. and Seline had been chosen by one such client who had seen her photos on social media and was willing to pay a significant amount of money. She was to be handed over to this man tonight, and if she resisted, she would simply be drugged and taken away unconscious.
” Antoine said this calmly, without emotion, as if he were discussing a routine business deal. And it was this coldness, this complete lack of humanity in his words that shocked Seline more than the threats themselves. At one point, when the men were distracted discussing the details of the transfer, Seline managed to discreetly take her phone out of her purse, which was lying on the chair.
She only had a few seconds, and she couldn’t call without attracting attention. She remembered the Sanctuary Foundation’s business card and quickly found their contact information on the internet. With trembling fingers, she sent a message to the foundation’s email address. Help. I am being held at the Burge Al Arab Hotel, room 2314.
They want to sell me. French citizen Selen Dubois. Please help. She managed to press send and hide the phone back in her bag a second before one of the men turned to her. The next two hours were a nightmare. The men forced her to take a shower, change into a dress they had brought, and put makeup on her by force while one of them held her hand the whole time to prevent her from escaping.
Antoine checked her purse, took her passport, money, and credit cards, but did not find the phone, which Seline had managed to hide under the mattress of the bed. Around 6:00 in the evening, they were about to take her out of the hotel when there was a knock at the door. The men exchanged glances, and Antoine went to the door and opened it on the chain.
Standing outside was Ila from the sanctuary foundation accompanied by a man in a private security guard’s uniform. Ila said calmly, “We have received a message from Madmoiselle Dubois that she needs help. I represent an international women’s rights organization accredited by the UAE government, and I have the authority to evacuate citizens who are in danger.
If you don’t open the door, I will have to call the police.” The men clearly did not expect this turn of events. They conferred among themselves in Arabic and Antoine before opening the door quickly whispered to Seline. If you say anything, your family will suffer. We know where they live. Then he opened the door completely, feigned surprise, and said, “What a misunderstanding.
Madmoiselle Dubois is my fianceé. We are here on vacation. She may be nervous about the upcoming wedding. Ila entered the room, approached Seline, and quietly asked in French, “Did you send the message?” Seline, trembling all over, nodded. Ila turned to the men and said, “Madmoiselle Dubois asked for help, and we are obliged to provide it.
If this is indeed a misunderstanding, then you won’t mind if she talks to me alone.” Antoine wanted to object, but the security guard who was with Ila, an imposing man, took a step forward, and Antoine gave in. Ila led Seline into the hallway, and they went into the next room, which, as it turned out, had been reserved by the foundation.
When the door closed, Seline burst into tears and told Ila everything. how Antoine had brought her to Dubai under the pretext of a business trip. How his behavior had changed at the yacht party. How today he and two other men had held her in the room and said they were going to sell her to a wealthy client. Leila listened attentively, recording on a dictapone with Selen’s consent.
And when she finished, she hugged her and said, “You’re safe now. We deal with cases like this. You need to leave Dubai as soon as possible, and we will help you do that. But it has to be done properly and safely, otherwise these people will find you. She explained that they couldn’t just take Seline to the police because some of these networks had connections in law enforcement and that the best way was to arrange a quiet evacuation through the foundation’s private channels.
Selene agreed to everything Leila suggested. She had no choice. She was in a foreign country without documents, without money, in a state of shock and panic. Ila said they needed to act quickly that tonight they would move her to a safe haven outside Dubai and tomorrow they would arrange for her to fly to Europe with new documents which the foundation would obtain through its connections.
Selene asked if she could call her mother, but Ila gently but firmly dissuaded her, explaining that any calls could be traced and that it was better to wait until she was safe. We’ll send a message to your family on your behalf to let them know you’re okay, but let’s get you out of here alive first. Okay.
Seline, exhausted and frightened, agreed. At around 7:00 p.m. on June 23rd, Leila and the security guard took Selene out of the hotel through a service exit to avoid encountering Antoine and his accompllices. A black Range Rover SUV with tinted windows was waiting for them. Another man, who did not introduce himself, was sitting behind the wheel.
Selene sat in the back seat with Ila and the car drove out of the city toward the desert. On the way, Ila continued to reassure Seline, gave her water, and offered her a headache pill, which Seline took without suspicion. After 20 minutes of driving, Seline began to feel strangely sleepy. Her eyelids grew heavy, and she could barely keep her eyes open.
The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was Ila’s face, which suddenly became cold and indifferent, and her words, “Sleep, dear. When you wake up, everything will be different. It was at that moment at 3:00 in the afternoon, Paris time, that Selen’s mother, Isabelle, received that very message. Mom, I’m safe.
The foundation helped me leave. I’ll tell you everything soon. I love you. The message came from Selen’s phone, but it was actually sent by Ila using the phone that had been taken from Seline. Isabelle was puzzled. Her daughter wrote about some foundation about how they helped her leave, but from what? She was in Dubai on vacation with Antoine.
What could have gone wrong? Isabelle tried to call, but Selen’s phone was turned off. She wrote several messages, but there was no reply. She called Antoine, but his number was also unavailable. Her anxiety grew, but Isabelle tried to calm herself, thinking that since Seline had written that she was safe, everything was fine, and she would soon get in touch again and explain everything.
But the days passed, and there was no news from Seline. Isabelle called the Burj Alarab Hotel, but they said that guests named Selen Dubois and Antoine Bernard had checked out on June 23rd without leaving any contact information. She contacted her daughter’s friends, but no one knew anything. On June 28th, exactly 5 days after Seline’s disappearance, Isabelle filed a missing person report with the Lion Police.
An investigation was launched and detectives quickly determined that Antoine Bernard was not who he claimed to be. His real name was Amen Hadad, a Lebanese citizen with a French residence permit, and he had a criminal history involving fraud and human trafficking. He was already known to Interpol as a suspect in several cases of young women disappearing in Europe, who were later found in the Middle East in forced prostitution rings.
Selene Dubois’s case was referred to Interpol and a special unit of the French police dealing with human trafficking. Investigators contacted the UAE authorities and requested information about the Sanctuary Foundation, which according to Selen’s last message, she had contacted for help. And this is where things started to get strange.
The Sanctuary Foundation was indeed registered in Dubai as a nonprofit organization, had a professional website, an office in one of the city’s business centers, and even several publications in the local media about their charitable activities. But when the police tried to contact the fund’s management, it turned out that the office had been empty for several months.
The phones were not answering and the website, although still functioning, had not been updated since March 2022. Further investigation revealed a shocking truth. The Sanctuary Foundation was a fake organization created specifically to lure victims of human trafficking who were trying to escape their traffickers. The scheme was diabolically cynical and effective.
Agents of the network, such as Ila, attended parties and events where potential victims were present and specifically approached those who looked confused or frightened, offering help on behalf of the charitable foundation. Girls who found themselves in danger and desperately seeking a way to escape saw the foundation as their last hope and trusted them, not realizing that they were actually falling from the hands of one trafficker into the hands of another.
Even more dangerous, it turned out that the real owner of the sanctuary fund was not some altruistic philanthropist, but a man named Khaled Al-Mansour, a member of an influential business family from the UAE with connections in the oil industry and real estate. Formerly, Khaled was a respectable businessman, a donor to various charitable projects, a man with an impeccable reputation.
But behind this facade lay a different reality. Khaled was the organizer and financiier of a complex human trafficking network that operated not only in the UAE but also in other countries in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and Eastern Europe. His clients were wealthy and influential people willing to pay huge sums for exclusive goods, young educated women from Europe and America who could not simply be bought on the street or in a brothel.
After several months of investigation, in November 2022, investigators managed to establish contact with a former employee of the foundation, a woman named Nadia, who worked as an evacuation coordinator and who decided to cooperate with the police in exchange for protection and a new identity. From Nadia’s testimony, investigators learned the horrific details of what happened to the victims of the Sanctuary Foundation.
After the girls were rescued, they were given sleeping pills or sedatives and transported while unconscious to remote villas in the desert or other emirates where they were kept in isolation. They were deprived of their documents, phones, and any means of communication with the outside world. Meanwhile, messages were sent to their families and friends on their behalf, saying that they were safe and starting a new life, which explained the lack of real contact.
But the most horrific thing was the information about what happened to some of these girls next. Nadia said that there was an inner circle of Khaled’s clients, people with special perverted preferences who paid not just for sex or even slavery, but for something much darker. These clients had access to a closed platform on the darknet where they could watch the victims in real time, give instructions on how to treat them, and vote on various actions.
The platform operated on cryptocurrency which made transactions virtually untraceable. Nadia did not know the technical details of how the platform worked. But she saw some of the girls before and after their participation in these sessions and said that they came out broken in a state of deep shock, many with physical injuries.
What exactly happened to Selene Dubois after she lost consciousness in the car remains unknown. Nadia did not remember her case, specifically among the dozens of other girls who had gone through the system, but investigators based on Nadia’s testimony and other sources were able to partially reconstruct what had happened.
Seline was most likely taken to one of the network’s villas in the Emirate of Russ Alka, where she was held in an isolated room. Messages were sent to her family on her behalf, creating the appearance that she had been safely evacuated and was in the process of moving to another country. Over the course of several days, she was likely being prepared to participate in one of the closed sessions for special clients.
Seline’s fate remains under investigation. In December 2022, 6 months after her disappearance, a short entry appeared on the Sanctuary Foundation website in the success stories section. Selene D, a French citizen, was successfully evacuated from a dangerous situation in Dubai and is now starting a new life in a Scandinavian country where she has been granted asylum.
We wish her all the best in her new beginning. This post was dated June 28th, 2022, just 5 days after Seline’s disappearance, and was the only clue indicating that the Foundation wanted to give the impression that she had been safely rescued. But no real evidence that Seline is alive and in Scandinavia or anywhere else has ever been found.
In January 2023, an international operation cenamed Mirage, coordinated by Interpol and the special services of several countries led to the arrests of many members of Khaled al-Mansour’s network in the UAE, Lebanon, Turkey, and France. Amin Hadad, also known as Antoan Bernard, was arrested in Beirut while preparing a new operation to recruit victims.
Leila Hussein, the fund’s evacuation coordinator, and 17 other people associated with the network were also arrested. Khaled al-Mansour himself, using his connections and influence, managed to leave the UAE before his arrest and according to intelligence services, is hiding in one of the countries that does not have an extradition treaty with most Western states.
During a search of the network’s villas and premises, evidence of crimes was found, computers with records of cryptocurrency transactions, correspondence with clients, and video recordings that investigators described as extremely disturbing and indicative of serious crimes against humanity. 23 victims from different countries, France, Italy, the UK, Russia, Ukraine, and the US were identified.
All young women between the ages of 18 and 30 who disappeared under similar circumstances between 2018 and 2022. 11 of them were found alive in various locations within the network in serious physical and psychological condition. They were given medical and psychological assistance and repatriated to their countries.
The fate of the remaining 12 victims including Selene Dubois remains unknown. Among the materials found were remnants of the platform’s work on the darknet. Although the site itself had been shut down and cleared by administrators before the police arrived, cyber criminologists were able to recover some data and discovered that the platform actually functioned as a closed auction where participants could bid on various actions performed on the victims.
Bets were accepted in cryptocurrency, most often in Monero or Bitcoin, and the amounts ranged from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars per session. The highest bids were for so-called final sessions, a term whose meaning investigators prefer not to disclose publicly, but which apparently refers to participation in actions leading to the death of the victim.
Trials of arrested members of the network began in various countries during 2023. Amin Hadad was sentenced in France to 30 years in prison on charges of kidnapping, human trafficking, and involvement in murder, although the victim’s bodies were never found. Leila Hussein received 25 years in the UAE for participating in an organized criminal group and human trafficking.
The other accompllices received various sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years. During the trials, surviving victims testified about their horrific experiences, although most of them were unable or unwilling to reveal all the details due to trauma and fear of possible retaliation from members of the network or their clients who were still at large.
Selen’s mother, Isabelle Dubois, attended all the court hearings in France. She gave interviews to several media outlets, calling on governments to strengthen controls over so-called charitable organizations operating in high-risk areas for human trafficking and to establish international mechanisms to verify the legitimacy of such funds.
She founded her own foundation named after Seline, which works to educate young women about the risks of traveling with strangers and the signs of human trafficking networks. When asked if she believes her daughter is still alive, Isabelle replied, “I want to believe, but every day it becomes more difficult. I just want to know the truth about what happened to her, where she is, so that I can either hug her again or at least bury her properly and find peace.
” In April 2024, almost 2 years after Selen’s disappearance, Isabelle received an anonymous package. Inside was a flash drive containing only one folder dated 0623 2022, the day her daughter disappeared. Isabelle immediately handed the drive over to the police. It contained log files from a closed platform on the darknet used by Khaled’s network.
Among the records was a profile with the initials SD and a photo in which despite the poor image quality, Seline could be recognized. The records are dated from June 24th to June 28th, 2022 and contain brief descriptions of the sessions in which the victim participated, the amounts of the bets, and the cryptographic hashes of the transactions.
The last entry is dated June 28th, 900 p.m. local time in the UAE, and is marked final session completed, archive closed. The police are not releasing the contents of these files publicly out of respect for the family and the memory of the victim, but law enforcement sources speaking on condition of anonymity have confirmed that the contents indicate that Selene Dubois likely died during the last session on June 28th, 2022, just 5 days after her disappearance.
The body has never been found and probably never will be. Testimony from Nadia and other witnesses indicated that the network had established methods for disposing of bodies, including dissolving them in acid or burying them in remote desert areas where they would never be recovered. On July 17th, 2024, what would have been Selen’s 25th birthday, a French court officially declared her dead based on the body of evidence presented by investigators.
Isabelle held a private memorial service in Lion, attended by friends, relatives, and people who were simply moved by the story. There was no coffin at the ceremony, only a photograph of Seline, a smiling, vibrant young woman with the Eiffel Tower in the background taken a year before her tragic trip to Dubai.
In her speech, Isabelle said, “My daughter dreamed of changing the world for the better, working in international organizations, helping people. Instead, she fell victim to those who use people’s trust and kindness as a weapon against them. I don’t want her story to be forgotten. I want every girl, every woman to know that even organizations that call themselves saviors can be wolves in sheep’s clothing.
” A 24-year-old model from Minsk disappeared in Dubai in July 2019 after a private party at the mansion of an influential person. Officially, her agency reported that she had left the country spontaneously and lost contact. But 3 years later, evidence emerged that the girl had been drugged, stripped naked, and placed in a transparent glass cube in the middle of the desert, where she died of thirst and heat stroke over several days while being watched on camera.
Her body was burned along with the cube so that no traces remained. This is a story about how public humiliation in a culture of honor can cost a life and how money and power allow crimes to be committed without consequences. Victoria Sergevna Costukovich was born on March 23rd, 1995 in Minsk, Bellarus. She grew up in an ordinary middle-class family.
Her father worked as an engineer at a factory and her mother was a school teacher. From childhood, she was tall and beautiful. And at the age of 16, she was noticed by a modeling agency scout on the street who suggested she try her hand at modeling. Victoria agreed, began attending castings and modeling for local clothing brands.
By the age of 20, she had become one of the most sought-after models in Minsk, modeling for magazines, participating in fashion shows, and signing contracts with several Bellarian and Russian companies. She earned well by local standards, but dreamed of more of an international career of shoots in Paris, Milan, and New York.
In 2017, she signed a contract with the international agency Elite Models, which promised to promote her in Western markets. The first two years of working with Elite were successful. Victoria traveled to Turkey, Greece, and Spain for shoots, worked with famous photographers, and appeared in international publications. But the real big money in the modeling business was not in studios and on catwalks, but at private events for wealthy clients.
The agency offered its models additional income, working as hostesses at private parties, on yachts, and in villas in Dubai, Monte Carlo, and on islands. Officially, it was just a job, attending events, chatting with guests, and creating a good atmosphere. Unofficially, everyone understood that sometimes more was expected of the models.
Victoria initially refused such offers, but when modeling contracts became less frequent and her money ran out faster, she agreed to try it. In June 2019, the agency offered her a week-long trip to Dubai to work as a hostess at a series of private events. The pay was generous, $5,000 a week, plus all expenses paid, including flights, accommodation in a five-star hotel, and meals.
Victoria agreed and flew to Dubai on June 7th. The first few days went smoothly. She attended parties on yachts and in skyscraper penous, socialized with wealthy businessmen from different countries, drank champagne, smiled, and took selfies. The work was easy, though sometimes unpleasant when the men became too intrusive.
But the agency warned her to be friendly, not rude to clients, and professional. On June 14th, Victoria and three other models from the agency were invited to a private party at a country villa in the desert about 60 km from the center of Dubai. The organizer was an influential member of the local elite whose name the agency did not disclose, saying only that he was a very important client and that they needed to make a good impression.
The models were warned that there would be about 20 guests at the party, all men. The atmosphere would be relaxed and the dress code would be evening wear. On the evening of June 14th, a black minivan with tinted windows picked up the girls. The driver did not speak English, only nodded and gestured for them to get in. They drove for about an hour on the highway, then turned onto a dirt road and bumped along the desert for another 20 minutes until they arrived at a large villa surrounded by a high wall.
The gate opened automatically and the car drove into the grounds. The villa was luxurious. A two-story white stone building with large panoramic windows, an illuminated swimming pool, palm trees, fountains, and marble walkways. Inside, everything was expensively furnished with dark wood and leather furniture, Persian rugs, crystal chandeliers, and paintings in gold frames.
Guests had already gathered on the terrace by the pool. Men in white dish dashas, traditional Arab clothing and western suits, talking, smoking hookah, and drinking. The owner of the villa greeted the models personally. A man of about 45, tall, strongly built, with a short beard and dark eyes, dressed in a white dish dasha and a black bish, a cloak worn by people of high status.
He spoke English with an accent, introduced himself simply as Muhammad, invited the girls in, and said that the evening was just beginning. He instructed the servants to show them a room where they could leave their belongings and change if necessary. The party went on as usual. The models socialized with the guests, drank champagne, and danced to the music that was turned on later.
The atmosphere was relaxed, but Victoria felt tense. The men looked at the girls openly as if they were merchandise, discussing their appearance among themselves in Arabic, thinking that they did not understand. One of the models, a girl from Ukraine, spoke a little Arabic and translated what they were saying to Victoria.
The comments were rude, sexual, and humiliating. Around midnight, the owner of the villa approached Victoria, sat down next to her on the sofa, and started a conversation. He asked her where she was from, how old she was, whether she liked Dubai, and what her plans for the future were. Victoria answered politely but briefly, trying to keep her distance.
Muhammad poured her more champagne and said that she was very beautiful and that he would like to get to know her better. He put his hand on her knee and squeezed it slightly. Victoria removed his hand and said that she was only there for work, for socializing, nothing personal. Muhammad smiled and said that everything could be discussed, that he was willing to pay well for company.
He named a price, $10,000 for the night. Victoria refused firmly, saying that she was not a prostitute, that he was mistaken about her. She stood up to leave. Muhammad grabbed her wrist, squeezed it hard, his face becoming stern. he said quietly, so that others couldn’t hear, that she didn’t understand who she was talking to, that here he decided who was who.
Victoria tried to pull her hand away, but he held on tight. She raised her voice and said loudly that he should let her go, that she would not tolerate such treatment. Several guests turned around, and the conversations died down. Muhammad let go of her hand and stood up, his face impassive, but his eyes burning with anger.
Victoria, angry and frightened at the same time, couldn’t hold back. She said loudly in English so that everyone could hear, that he was a pervert who bought women because he couldn’t get them any other way, that she was not a thing that could be bought with money, that he and his friends were disgusting, and she regretted agreeing to come here.
There was complete silence. All the guests looked at Victoria and Muhammad. No one moved or spoke. In Arab culture, public insults, especially those concerning a man’s honor, masculinity, and dignity, are one of the most serious sins. Victoria, not fully aware of this, had just dealt Muhammad a blow that could not be left unanswered.
Muhammad stood motionless for a few seconds, then nodded slowly, as if he had made a decision. He beckoned to one of the servants and said something briefly in Arabic. The servant nodded and quickly left the room. Muhammad looked at Victoria with a cold gaze and said quietly, but clearly in English that she had made a big mistake and would now have to pay for her disrespect.
He turned and went inside the villa. Victoria stood there confused and the other models ran up to her asking what had happened and advising her to leave immediately. But there was nowhere to go. They were in the desert 60 km from the city without a car and without any contact with the agency. Victoria took out her phone and tried to call, but there was no signal, either deliberately jammed or simply unavailable in this area.
A few minutes later, the servant returned with a tray holding four glasses filled with a juice-like drink. He said in broken English that the owner apologized for the misunderstanding and offered the girls refreshments before their return trip, adding that the car would be brought soon. The models exchanged glances.
Victoria hesitated, but one of the girls took a glass and drank it, saying that it was better not to aggravate the situation, just to drink and leave. The others also took glasses and drank. The drink was sweet, fruity, with a slight hint of something bitter, but not unpleasant. After a few minutes, Victoria felt dizzy.
Her legs became wobbly and her vision blurred. She tried to sit down, but fell onto the sofa, her body not obeying her. She heard the other girls start to fall, too. Someone screamed, but the sound was distant, muffled. Then everything went dark and she lost consciousness. She woke up to a bright light shining in her eyes.
Her head was splitting, her mouth was dry, and her body achd. She opened her eyes and squinted against the unbearable sun. She tried to cover her face with her hand, but her hand moved slowly and clumsily. Gradually, her vision cleared, and she saw where she was. She was lying on a bare concrete floor inside a small room with glass walls.
The walls were completely transparent without frames or joints, as if they were a single glass cube. The room was about 3 m by 3 m and about 3 m high. The ceiling was also glass, through which she could see the blue sky and the merciless sun. Around the cube for many kilometers stretched desert, sand, stones, not a single plant, not a single sign of life.
In the distance, mountains were visible, blurred by the haze of heat. Victoria sat up and looked at herself. She was completely naked with no clothes, jewelry, or anything else on her body. Her skin had already begun to reen from the sun, although she did not know how long she had been lying unconscious. In the corner of the cube stood a small video camera on a tripod, a red light glowing to indicate that it was working.
nothing else, no water, no food, no belongings. She jumped to her feet, rushed to the glass wall, and began pounding on it with her palms, screaming and calling for help. The glass was thick. Her blows were almost inaudible. Her voice was swallowed up by the emptiness of the desert.
She tried to break the glass with her fists, but only broke her knuckles, blood smearing across the transparent surface. The glass didn’t even crack. She walked around the perimeter of the cube, looking for a door, a crack, any way to get out. The walls were perfectly smooth without a single seam. It was a solid glass box sealed on all sides.
The floor was concrete, cold despite the heat outside, apparently massive to keep the cube stable. The ceiling was also glass, but too high to reach even if she jumped. Victoria returned to the camera, stood in front of it, looked into the lens, shouted, demanded to be released, explained that it was a mistake, that she regretted what she had said, and apologized.
The camera stood motionless, recording silently. She kicked the camera with her foot and the tripod swayed but did not fall as it was bolted to the floor. The sun rose higher and the heat intensified. The glass cube acted like a greenhouse and the temperature inside rose rapidly. Victoria felt sweat breaking out all over her body, dripping onto the floor.
It was becoming difficult to breathe. The air was hot and stuffy. She lay down on the concrete floor, which was slightly cooler, and tried to breathe slowly to conserve her strength. Time dragged on agonizingly. Victoria didn’t know how many hours had passed. There were no landmarks, only the sun slowly moving across the sky.
Thirst began to torment her after a few hours. Her mouth was completely dry, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her lips were cracked. She licked her lips, but there was almost no saliva. Her head was spinning from dehydration and heat stroke. By the evening of the first day, the sun began to set and the temperature dropped.
Victoria lay on the floor, exhausted, sunburned, and tormented by thirst. Her skin was red, and blisters began to appear on her shoulders and chest, where the sun burned the most. She tried to think about what to do, how to survive, but her thoughts were confused. Her head wasn’t working. It got cold at night.
The temperature in the desert dropped sharply after sunset. And in the glass cube, without clothes and without the possibility of shelter, Victoria was freezing. She curled up on the floor, shivering, her teeth chattering. She couldn’t sleep. The cold wouldn’t let her, and neither would her fear.
She lay there and looked at the stars through the glass ceiling, bright and countless, indifferent to her suffering. On the morning of the second day, the sun returned, and the torture began again. Heat, thirst, pain from burns. Victoria tried to get up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. Her strength was gone.
She crawled to the glass walls, scratched them with her nails, leaving bloody marks, begging someone to save her. The camera continued to record everything. Somewhere far away, in a villa in the desert, Muhammad sat in a darkened room in front of a large screen showing the image from the camera in the cube.
He watched Victoria, watched her suffer, watched her slowly die. For him it was a ritual, an act of restoring the honor she had insulted. In his culture, honor is more important than life, and public humiliation cannot go unpunished. Sitting next to him were two of his closest friends, also men of influence and wealth, who shared his views on justice and punishment.
They watched in silence, occasionally commenting that she deserved it, that Western women did not understand respect, that this was a lesson for anyone who dared to insult them. The broadcast was closed via an encrypted channel accessible only to the three of them. Muhammad set aside an hour a day to watch, usually in the evening when he returned from work or meetings.
For him, it was like meditation, a way to cleanse himself of anger and restore his inner balance. On the third day, Victoria hardly moved. She lay on her side, breathing shallowly, her lips swollen and cracked until they bled, her tongue swollen and blackened, her skin covered with blisters and beginning to peel in places.
Her eyes were sunken, and her dehydration had reached a critical stage. She no longer screamed or scratched at the walls, but just lay there and stared into space. Sometimes she moved her lips trying to say something, but no sound came out. Maybe she was praying. Maybe she was calling for her mother. Maybe she was asking for death. The camera recorded every movement, every breath.
By the evening of the third day, Victoria began to write on the glass. She used blood from her broken fingers, which she had scratched on the concrete in an attempt to find a way out. She wrote letters that were crooked, uneven, and smudged. She wrote a few words in Russian, then in English. Help, please, mom.
Then Muhammad’s name and the word murderer. Muhammad saw it on the screen and smiled. He told his friends that she still didn’t understand, that no one would come, that no one would find out, that the desert was vast, the cube stood in a place where even Bedawins didn’t go because there was nothing to find there. That even if someone accidentally saw the cube from a distance, they wouldn’t approach it, thinking it was a mirage or someone’s strange installation.
On the fourth day, Victoria stopped moving altogether. She lay motionless, her breathing barely noticeable, her chest rising and falling weakly. Her skin had turned gray, covered with a crust of dried blood and dirt. Her eyes were open, but she saw nothing. Her gaze was empty, glassy. Not only was there a camera in the cube, but also sensors that monitored her vital signs, body temperature, heart rate, and breathing.
The information was transmitted to the same screen where Muhammad was watching the broadcast. He saw her pulse dropping, her breathing becoming slower and slower, her body temperature decreasing. On the evening of the fourth day, around 9:00, the sensors showed cardiac arrest. Her pulse dropped to zero.
Her breathing stopped. Muhammad stared at the screen for a few more minutes, making sure it was all over. Then he turned off the broadcast, got up, and left the room. He told the servants it was time to clean up. An hour later, a truck with a crane pulled up to the cube. Workers hired specifically for this task and paid huge sums of money for their silence, hooked the cube with cables, lifted it off the ground along with its concrete base, and loaded it onto the truck’s platform.
The cube was heavy. The glass was thick and specially reinforced, weighing about 2 tons. The truck took it back to the villa, but not to the villa itself, but to a large hanger located a kilometer away. The hanger was built specifically for the disposal of waste and unwanted items and contained an industrial furnace for burning garbage, capable of heating up to 1,500° C.
The furnace was rarely used, but was kept in working order. The workers rolled the cube into the hanger, opened the furnace door, and used a crane to place the cube inside hole without opening it or touching the body. They closed the furnace door and started the heating. The temperature rose slowly, first to 500, then to a th00and, then to 1 and a half thousand°.
The glass began to melt, turning into a viscous mass, enveloping the body inside. The body burned along with the glass. The bones charred and crumbled, and the organic tissues evaporated. The process took several hours. By the morning of the fifth day, only a molten glass lump and a handful of ashes mixed with concrete fragments from the base remained in the furnace.
The workers waited for the furnace to cool down, removed the remains, crushed them with hammers into fine crumbs, and poured them into bags. The bags were loaded onto a truck, taken to the desert, to another place far from the villa, and buried in a deep pit, which was then covered with sand and stones. No traces remained, no body, no DNA, no clothes, no personal belongings.
Everything was burned and completely destroyed. Even the camera from the cube was melted along with the rest. The memory card was removed in advance and destroyed separately, smashed and burned. While this was happening, the Elite Models Agency in Dubai began to worry. Victoria had not been in touch for 4 days. Her phone was unavailable and she had not returned to the hotel.
The agency manager called and sent messages, but there was no response. He contacted other models who had been at the same party. They returned to the hotel on the morning of June 15th, the day after the party, and said that Victoria had quarreled with the villa owner, and that they had all lost consciousness after drinking.
They woke up in the hotel in their rooms with no memory of how they got there. Victoria was not with them. They thought she had left separately or stayed at the villa of her own accord. They did not think much of it at first because this sometimes happened. Models would stay with wealthy clients for a day or two if they agreed on additional payment.
The agency manager tried to contact the party organizer, but the contact details he had were fake. The phone was not answering and the email address did not exist. He contacted the Dubai police on June 18th and filed a missing person report. The police accepted the report and began an investigation. They requested information about Victoria’s movements and checked the recordings from cameras in the hotel, at the airport, and on the streets.
The last recordings showed Victoria getting into a black minivan on the evening of June 14th near the hotel. The car’s license plate number was visible in the recording, but when they checked it, it turned out that the car was registered to a non-existent person with fake documents. The police questioned the other models, who told them about the party, the villa in the desert, and Victoria’s argument with the owner.
They described the villa and the direction they were heading in, but did not know the exact address, as everything had been arranged through an agency that had received the order from an anonymous client. The police tried to find the villa and sent patrols to the desert in the direction indicated by the girls. The desert is huge with hundreds of villas and private residences belonging to rich people, shakes, and businessmen.
Without an exact address, it is almost impossible to find a specific villa. The police checked several, questioned the owners, but everyone denied having held parties or seeing a model from Bellarus. Without evidence, without witnesses, without a body, the police could not actively continue the investigation.
Two weeks later, in early July, the police received information from an unknown source. An anonymous email stated that Victoria Costukovich had left the United Arab Emirates on June 15th on a private flight to Turkey. They provided the flight number and the name of the private airline that operated the charter flight.
The police checked the information. The airline confirmed that the flight had indeed taken place with a private plane departing from the private terminal at Dubai airport on June 15th at 11:00 a.m. bound for Istanbul. The passenger was a woman named Victoria Costukovich and her passport details matched.
The police requested copies of the documents and video recordings from the cameras in the terminal. The documents were genuine Victoria’s passport. The video showed a woman wearing sunglasses and a headscarf passing through the terminal and boarding the plane. Her face was not clearly visible, but her build and height matched Victoria’s.
The police assumed that it was indeed her, that she had left voluntarily, possibly after receiving an offer from a client or deciding to leave for personal reasons. They contacted the Turkish authorities and requested information about the flight’s arrival. Turkey confirmed that the flight had landed in Istanbul on June 15th, that the passenger had passed through passport control and left the airport. Further traces were lost.
The Dubai police closed the case as not requiring further investigation, considering that Victoria had left the country of her own accord and lost contact with the agency for personal reasons. In fact, it was all a setup. Muhammad used his connections and money to create a false trail. He had Victoria’s passport, which he had taken from her belongings after drugging her at a party.
He hired a woman of similar build, who passed through the terminal using Victoria’s passport, and boarded the plane. The woman was an accomplice and received a large sum of money for the job. The plane did indeed fly to Istanbul. The woman passed through passport control, then quietly returned to Dubai on another flight using her real documents.
Victoria’s passport was destroyed. The whole operation cost more than $100,000, but for Muhammad, it was pocket change. It was important to create the appearance that Victoria was alive and had left the country. Victoria’s family and Minsk had become concerned even earlier. Her parents called her every day while she was in Dubai.
But after June 14th, her phone was unavailable. They contacted the agency which said that Victoria was not responding but had possibly left to work in another country. Her parents filed a report with the Bellarian police and asked for help in finding their daughter. The Bellarusian police contacted the Dubai police and requested information.
They received a response that Victoria Costukovich had left the UAE on June 15th, flown to Turkey, and her further whereabouts were unknown. The Bellarian police asked the parents to contact the Turkish authorities to try to find traces of their daughter there. The parents tried, wrote requests, called embassies, but to no avail.
No one in Turkey had seen Victoria, and there were no records of her stay after passing through passport control. She seemed to have vanished into thin air. Her parents hired a private detective in Turkey who searched for several months, interviewing people and checking hotels, hospitals, and morgs. He found nothing. By the end of 2019, the search had ended.
Victoria’s family came to terms with the fact that she was missing, possibly dead, but without a body or evidence. There was nothing they could do. She was officially declared missing. Victoria’s mother fell into depression. Her father tried to continue searching, but his strength gave out. They never found out what really happened to their daughter.
Three years passed. Muhammad continued to live his life rich, influential, untouched by anyone. He continued to throw parties, invite models, run his business, and meet with important people. No one suspected him of murder because there was no official murder. There was only a missing girl who had flown to another country and disappeared.
But in 2022, something unexpected happened. One of Muhammad’s friends, one of those who had watched the broadcast from the camera in the cube, had a falling out with him over business. The conflict was serious and concerned the division of profits from a joint venture. The friend, offended and angry, decided to take revenge.
He contacted an international journalistic organization that investigates crimes against women. He provided them with information about Victoria’s death, told them the whole story of how it happened, who was behind it, and how the body was destroyed. He did not provide any evidence because there was none.
All electronic devices had been destroyed, and witnesses among the servants and workers had been intimidated and paid huge sums of money to keep quiet. But the journalists began to dig deeper. They contacted Victoria’s family, the agency, and the Dubai police. They reopened the case of her disappearance and began to verify the version provided by the informant.
They found inconsistencies in the official story about the flight to Turkey. They examined the video recording from the terminal more closely with the help of facial recognition experts. The experts said that the woman in the recording was not Victoria. Her facial features did not match despite the glasses and headscarf.
They published the investigation in 2022 in an international publication. They named Muhammad, although with the caveat that this was unconfirmed information from an anonymous source. They described the whole story as told by the informant. This caused a great stir, especially in Barus and Russia, where many girls work as models in Arab countries.
The UAE government reacted sharply, denying all accusations and calling the publication slander and an attempt to discredit the country. They stated that the Dubai police investigation had been conducted properly, that Victoria Costukovich had left the country voluntarily, and that there was no evidence of a crime. Muhammad issued a statement denying all allegations, saying that he had never met the girl, that parties were held regularly at his villa, but that he was not responsible for all the guests.
Attempts were made to reopen the case and international human rights organizations demanded a new investigation. But without a body, without direct evidence, without witnesses willing to speak, nothing changed. Muhammad was too influential, too protected. The case was closed again, this time for good.
Victoria’s family never received justice. Her mother died of grief in 2023, never knowing the truth. Her father continues to live, but is broken by the loss of his daughter and wife. Elite models stopped sending models to Dubai for private events after this scandal, as it was too big a risk to their reputation. Victoria’s story became a warning to thousands of girls who dream of a modeling career and easy money in rich countries.
It showed that danger can lurk behind glamour and luxury, that cultural differences can cost lives, that insulting someone’s honor in some cultures is punishable by death, and that money and power allow crimes to be committed without consequences. Muhammad continues to live in Dubai, running his business and throwing parties.
The cube in which Victoria died has long since been destroyed, and the place in the desert where it stood is no different from the rest of the desert. Nothing reminds us of what happened there. Only sand, stones, sun, and wind that carries dust across the endless expanse. The story begins when the parents of a Polish model receive an urn in the mail containing ashes that do not belong to their daughter.
The official report mentions thrombosis, but the actual death documents are hidden and her body has been inbalmed and is kept in a closed room in a palace in the United Arab Emirates as a religious object for private rituals. The Polish model in this story will be called Marta Noak. This is a neutral and conditional name that does not refer to a specific real person.
She was born into an ordinary family in a small town in southern Poland. Her father worked as an electrician at a local enterprise and her mother was a nurse at the district hospital. Marta had one younger sister. The family lived without luxury but without extreme poverty with a typical attitude for such towns.
Children should study, get a profession, and live a little better than their parents. From an early age, Marta attracted attention because of her appearance. Her tall stature, regular features, light hair, and bright blue eyes made her stand out in any group of people. In high school, her classmates began to encourage her to participate in beauty contests and work as a model.
She gained her first serious experience in the capital when she was just over 18. She went there for a while to try her hand at modeling agencies. There she was assessed as promising for catalog and advertising shoots, but not as a high-fashion star. Marta signed a contract with a small agency that sent models to commercial shoots in different European countries.
She put off her university studies, saying she had a chance to earn money, see the world, and help her family. For several years, Marta worked on contracts in different cities, flying to shoots in Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. These were standard assignments for mid-level models, clothing catalogs, cosmetics advertisements, and participation in regional shows.
She had enough money to pay for a small apartment in Warsaw, save some of her earnings, and periodically help her parents. Marta maintained a neat profile on social media where she combined work photos with personal ones. There was no display of expensive cars or excessive luxury, but it was clear that she was living an active professional life.
After about 7 years of this work, it became clear that her career had stabilized at a level that did not allow for significant growth. Age was working against her in the modeling industry, and without major contracts or luck, the door to higher level shoots was closed. During this period, Marta began to consider more risky offers.
Agencies working at the intersection of the modeling business and private events periodically offered trips to closed events with a wealthy audience in the Persian Gulf countries. Formally, this was presented as participation in presentations, hotel openings, and shows for private collections. A critical contact arose at a similar event in one of the European capitals.
There was a private party organized by a hotel chain from the United Arab Emirates. Entrepreneurs, investors, and representatives of wealthy families from the Persian Gulf countries were invited. A local modeling agency provided girls to accompany the guests, give presentations, and model clothing. Marta was among the invited guests.
At this event, she met a man who was introduced as Prince Fidel bin Rashid, heir to a large family fortune in one of the Emirates, including shares in hotels, land, and other assets. That evening, the prince was reserved, showing no overt interest in the models, but watching them closely. Martha caught his attention, not only with her appearance, but also with her behavior.
She did not seek to constantly be around the wealthy crowd, behaving correctly and distantly, not trying to impose herself or show excessive interest in the high status guests. Later, he approached her himself, struck up a conversation on neutral topics, asked about her work, how long she had been in the industry, and whether she had ever been interested in living outside Poland.
A few days later, Marta received an email on behalf of a Swiss consulting company. The letter stated that one of the company’s clients was interested in the possibility of concluding a personal contract agreement with her for long-term representation. Attached was a document of several pages written in formal legal language. The essence of the proposal was to become an official partner and representative of the client’s interests for several years.
In effect, a contract spouse without directly using that term. She was guaranteed a move to the United Arab Emirates, accommodation in a private residence, the status of spouse of a member of the ruling family in private circles, and fixed financial compensation upon completion of the agreement. The amount of compensation was specified as several million dollars payable in a lump sum provided that all terms of the contract were fulfilled.
The document emphasized confidentiality, a ban on disclosure of the details of the agreement, restrictions on contact with the press, and an obligation to participate in certain events. A separate clause stipulated that medical care, security, and living conditions would be fully provided by the customer and that any emergencies would be dealt with within the internal jurisdiction of the host country.
This meant that in disputed situations, the legal system of the emirate would apply rather than that of Marta’s country of citizenship. Marta showed the document to a lawyer she knew in Poland. He noted the absence of a clear mechanism for unilateral termination of the contract on her initiative, unclear wording about internal procedures in the event of a conflict, and a virtually complete waiver of claims against the customer in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
He recommended that she refuse or seek serious amendments. At the same time, Marta consulted with several girls who had experience working at private events in the Persian Gulf countries. Some of them talked about such contracts as a quick way to earn a large sum of money, while others mentioned cases of pressure and strict control, but without specific names and cases.
At this stage, the financial prospect became the deciding factor. Marta understood that in a normal modeling career, her chances of earning a comparable amount in a limited period of time were minimal. Her family was counting on her help and she herself did not have a stable profession outside the fashion industry.
After several rounds of correspondence, minor revisions and internal struggle, she signed the document. Formally, it was an agreement for representation services and a long-term personal contract. Only legal entities were disclosed on the customer’s side, but it was clear from accompanying signs that it was Prince Fidil.
Next, the move was organized. Marta was issued a visa tied to a specific sponsor. Tickets, accommodation, and insurance were paid for by the client. Upon arrival in the United Arab Emirates, she was met by representatives of the resident’s security service and immediately taken to a closed area belonging to the prince’s family.
It was not a public hotel, but a private complex with controlled access. From the very first days, Marta was confronted with a strict system of rules. She was told that she could only leave the residence when accompanied by trusted individuals. Telephones and the internet were not formally prohibited, but their use was controlled.
She was given a separate phone to communicate with her family. Her personal devices gradually faded into the background. She was asked to avoid posts that could reveal her exact location or details of the interior. This was explained as a matter of security and privacy. The living conditions were comfortable, a separate spacious room, cleaning and catering staff, a car with a driver.
She accompanied the prince to private dinners, meetings, and private events where she was introduced as his spouse or official companion. In the country, her position remained informal in the public sphere, but within the prince’s circle, her status was clear. For almost a year, Marta’s life seemed strictly controlled, but relatively stable.
She herself described it in rare confidential conversations as a golden cage, a high level of comfort, but minimal freedom. Outwardly, everything looked like the fulfillment of the terms of the contract. Over time, the religious and quasi mystical component of the prince’s entourage grew stronger. People who were presented as spiritual mentors and religious scholars began to appear constantly at the residence.
At the same time, specialists with scientific backgrounds in neurochnology and experimental medicine began to arrive. Open sources describe similar private initiatives where wealthy clients finance projects in the field of life extension and brain research. MATU was gradually drawn into this area. At first, it was all about harmless examinations, tests, neuroscanning, sleep monitoring, and reactions to audio and text stimuli.
Everything was presented as work on stress levels and cognitive function optimization. She did not have actual informed consent based on an independent medical opinion. She was under the complete control of the client. Later in conversations between the prince and religious advisers and scientists, phrases such as transfer of essence, projection of consciousness, and preservation of the soul through a carrier began to appear regularly.
Neuroscientists used terminology about mapping neural patterns and possible synchronization between two brains. Religious advisers linked this to old mystical concepts. At this intersection, the idea of a ritual arose, which a small circle of people began to call an experiment in consciousness transfer. By this point, Martha found herself in a position where it was extremely difficult to refuse to participate.
She was presented with a document describing the procedure as voluntary participation in an experiment on deep neural coupling with a spiritual component. It specifically stated that serious side effects, including death, were possible, but the probability of such outcomes was described as extremely low.
The legal purpose of the document was to remove as much responsibility as possible from the organizers in the event of a fatal outcome. Marta signed the consent form while isolated without independent advisers and completely dependent on the prince and his entourage. She only told her family in Poland that she was undergoing health courses and special examinations as part of a private program without mentioning terms such as consciousness transfer or brain experiments.
To her parents, this seemed like just another element of their daughter’s unusual but controlled life in the residence of a wealthy man abroad. It is at this stage that the story goes beyond the scope of a standard contract marriage and enters the realm of a combination of private religious mystical practices and opaque pseudocientific experiments characteristic of some closed elite circles as periodically reported by human rights and journalistic investigations.
How exactly the central procedure took place has not been officially recorded. Further events are known only from indirect data, fragments of evidence, and decisions that were made after Marta’s death. During the central procedure, Marta Novak was in a completely controlled area of the residence where no outsiders were allowed, including staff not involved in the experiment.
Formally, it was referred to as a session of deep neuro stimulation with spiritual accompaniment. In fact, it was a closed ritual where scientific terminology was used to legitimize actions that were not subject to independent medical observation or a transparent protocol. The preparations for this procedure show that it was planned in advance and carefully.
Brain activity monitoring devices, heart rate and respiration recording systems and equipment for introvenous administration of drugs were brought to the residents. Such equipment is used in legal medicine and research. But the difference here was the lack of clinical status and external control by regulators, which is often a key factor in the tragic outcomes of closed experiments on humans conducted in private facilities.
Martha was placed on a special chair or table, and numerous electrodes were attached to her head to record her brain’s electrical activity. Heart rate and breathing sensors were placed on her body. She was given an introvenous drug described in the documents as a seditive and conduit to deep states of consciousness. The description stated that it reduces anxiety and allows for a deeper connection between the participants in the process.
Prince Fidil, several religious consultants and two neurochnology specialists were present in the room. The role of the latter was to set up and control the equipment, but they were not formally responsible in the event of complications. The ritual part consisted of reading religious texts and formulas, which according to the advisers were supposed to open channels for the transmission of essence.
The scientific part consisted of sending certain series of stimuli to Marta’s brain in the form of electrical impulses and sound sequences designed to provoke specific neural patterns. At the same time, according to fragmentaryary evidence, the prince was in the same room sitting or lying down with sensors connected to his head that recorded his own neural activity.
This was presented as a coupling of two brains. In practice, such procedures in conditions that do not meet clinical standards carry a serious risk of overloading the cardiovascular system and the central nervous system. The combination of psychoactive drugs, intense stimulation, and severe psychological pressure can lead to a sharp rise or fall in blood pressure, cardiac arhythmia, and cardiac arrest.
Open medical sources describe cases of sudden cardiac death against a background of a combination of stress factors and incorrect use of stimulants, especially in the absence of resuscitation equipment and trained personnel. At the critical moment, Marta’s condition deteriorated sharply. The equipment first recorded a surge and then a drop in brain electrical activity accompanied by a serious heart rhythm disturbance.
According to normal medical practice, the procedure should have been stopped immediately. A resuscitation team called and life support protocol followed. However, in a private residence, the actual response depended entirely on the will of the prince and his immediate entourage. According to information that was later disclosed in a small circle and which human rights activists tried to reconstruct, the doctors attempted to perform basic resuscitation measures for a short time.
However, there was no full resuscitation team or equipment. After a short period of unsuccessful attempts to restore her heartbeat, Martha was pronounced dead. The cause of death was actually cardiac arrest due to the body’s overload as a result of a combination of drugs, stimulation, and stress.
At this stage, Prince Fidel personally made a key decision. Instead of initiating official medical protocol, notifying state authorities, or at least registering her death through a regular hospital, he chose a completely closed scenario. This decision determined the further chain of events from concealing the circumstances of her death to turning Martha’s body into an object of quasi religious veneration within the palace.
The first step was to put the correct version on paper. The family doctor, who had been working for the prince’s family for a long time and was completely dependent on them, drew up an internal conclusion that did not reflect the actual course of events. In the documents which were drawn up retroactively, the death was described as sudden heart failure against a background of thrombosis.
This is a standard phrase often used in situations where the cause of death is to be presented as natural and not requiring further investigation. The report made no mention of experimental procedures, the use of special drugs, or the use of uncertified equipment. The next question was what to do with the body.
In a normal situation, when a foreign citizen dies in another country, the body or ashes are returned to the family and after all the paperwork has been completed. In controversial circumstances, the death becomes the subject of a criminal investigation and diplomatic authorities become involved in the process. However, the prince gave a direct order not to return the body within his entourage.
This was motivated by religious mystical logic. It was believed that during the ritual, part of his essence had been transferred to Marta’s body, and now it represented a vessel, a relic that needed to be preserved in the residence. The decision to embalm was made quickly. The residents already had contacts with people familiar with traditional methods of preserving the body adapted to the local religious context.
Formally, Islam does not require long-term preservation of the body or complex imbalming procedures. But in elite circles, there are practices that combine religious elements with a cult and magical beliefs. In the private sphere of wealthy families in various countries, there have been cases where bodies or parts of bodies have been preserved in closed rooms as symbols or objects of worship.
Martha’s body was treated with special solutions. Her internal organs were removed and replaced with preservatives. Some of the organs may have been used for specific rituals as was indirectly mentioned by those who overheard internal discussions. Externally, the body was brought to a state that allowed for its long-term storage.
After that, it was placed in a closed room inside the palace to which only the prince, several trusted individuals, and religious consultants who participated in the ritual had access. This room became a kind of sanctuary. For the prince’s entourage, the body was seen as a material carrier of the transferred essence, an object through which further rituals were performed.
There texts were read and formulas were recited which according to the participants maintained the connection and strengthened the spiritual channel. In fact, it was about turning the corpse of a foreign citizen who died as a result of an experimental procedure into a secret cult object. At the same time, it was necessary to settle the matter with the family in Poland and the official authorities.
To do this, they used a classic scheme that is common in a number of countries where institutions or private structures try to hide the real causes of death of foreign citizens. The family was sent a message stating that Marta had died as a result of sudden thrombosis and heart failure while staying at a private clinic in the United Arab Emirates.
It was stated that death had come quickly without prolonged suffering and that the doctors had done everything possible. Separately, her parents were informed that in accordance with local regulations, the body had been cremated quickly in accordance with humane standards and that the ashes were ready for shipment.
Along with the message, they were offered monetary compensation for the funeral arrangements and as an expression of sympathy. The amount seemed large by Polish standards and was presented as a gesture of goodwill on the part of the family with whom Marta was formally under contract. The parents were sent an ern with the ashes.
Later, when the whole picture became clearer, there were serious reasons to believe that the ashes in the urn did not belong to Marta. In the absence of independent control over cremation and identification of remains in a country where the case was not registered as criminal but was treated as a natural death.
It was impossible to verify this at the time. The family received the ern death documents stating thrombosis and heart failure and a sum of money that was significant for them. At this stage, the official story was closed. Within the United Arab Emirates, the death of a foreign citizen did not become public knowledge.
The case did not receive widespread publicity, and there were no open court proceedings or journalistic investigations. In Poland, it looked like a tragic but formally natural death abroad. Without access to the place of death or the actual medical records, the relatives were completely dependent on the information provided through diplomatic and private channels.
Marta’s mother’s doubts arose quite quickly. She was alarmed by the speed of the cremation, the inability to see the body, the limited information, and the formal nature of the explanations. She tried to contact representatives of the diplomatic services, and wrote requests asking for more detailed information about the clinic, the doctors, and the circumstances of her death.
In response, she received standard replies stating that the local authorities had confirmed the version of sudden heart failure and that there were no additional grounds for review. At the same time, the closed practice of using Marta’s body as a ritual object continued in the residence itself. No one outside the palace knew about this.
Information began to leak out only through the service staff, some of whom, despite the high level of control and intimidation, maintained their own moral boundaries. Within such structures, it is often low paid employees working in the shadows who are the first to raise the alarm about human rights violations and abuses, as has been repeatedly confirmed in other cases of violence and death in the private estates of wealthy families.
One of the key figures was a young woman from the local staff who was periodically called upon to service the premises near the closed room. She will henceforth be referred to as the internal witness, although her name and exact position are not disclosed for obvious reasons. It was through her and a chain of contacts with human rights activists and journalists that the first descriptions of what actually happened to Marta at Prince Fidil’s residence began to emerge.
The internal witness was the starting point for what later made it possible to at least partially reconstruct the course of events surrounding Marta Novak’s death and the transformation of her body into a hidden cult object inside Prince Fidel’s palace. She worked as a member of the resident’s service staff, performing domestic tasks and periodically being called upon to work in areas adjacent to rooms where ordinary employees were not usually allowed.
In such structures, access is strictly hierarchical, but technical needs and the human factor sometimes create brief windows through which one can see what is not intended for outside eyes. According to her, as relayed to human rights activists through a chain of intermediaries, it was not the body itself that first attracted attention, but a change in the access regime to one of the rooms.
The room located on the inner level of the palace and previously used as a storage or auxiliary area had been completely cleared and closed off. Additional locks were installed. The doors could only be opened with special keys or codes, and people from the prince’s inner circle and religious advisers began to appear more often.
Staff were strictly forbidden to enter under any pretext. Once the witness was temporarily assigned to clean the corridor, leading to this room at a time when the door was slightly a jar. She did not go inside, but through the crack she could see part of the interior. According to her description, inside there was an object that in shape and posture was clearly a human body, vertically fixed and partially covered with cloth.
She could not make out the facial features, but noted light skin and hair. Later, comparing the height, build, and time period, she concluded that it could have been Marta, whose death had already been reported to her as sudden and followed by cremation. The witness noted separately that Prince Fidil and religious advisers regularly entered this room.
Events were held inside accompanied by the reading of texts, the recitation of formulas, and the use of aromatic mixtures. The staff heard distant sounds, but did not have access to the content of what was happening. All of this fits into the picture of the formation of a hidden ritual space around the body of a person who is declared a vessel or relic in a closed group which corresponds to cases of privatized worship within elite residences described in other contexts.
At this stage, Marta’s family in Poland only had the official version about thrombosis and the ern with ashes that was sent to them along with the money. The mother did not give up trying to get more information. She wrote requests to the Polish Foreign Ministry, contacted consular services, and tried to obtain at least copies of medical documents and contacts for the clinic where her daughter allegedly died.
The responses were formal in nature. It was reported that the local authorities had confirmed the diagnosis of acute heart failure against a background of thrombosis, that the cremation had been carried out in accordance with local regulations, and that there were no additional grounds for intervention.
Attempts to initiate an independent investigation were hampered by the practical impossibility of gaining access to the prince’s residence, the medical facilities that formally appeared in the documents or the people involved in the procedure. Without a body, without authentic protocols, and with the host country blocking information, the family and Polish officials found themselves in a position where it was virtually impossible to do anything beyond sending requests and receiving standard responses. This is a typical situation
in cases where a foreign citizen dies under controversial circumstances in a closed structure of a wealthy family in another jurisdiction and where the official line of the host country does not allow for the admission of guilt. The breakthrough came only after a considerable amount of time when an internal witness having left the palace managed to reach out to human rights activists dealing with cases of violence and abuse in the private residences of wealthy Middle Eastern families through her network of contacts. Such
organizations already had experience working with stories in which staff reported abuse, illegal deprivation of liberty, hidden deaths, and unofficial punishments that remained outside of criminal statistics. They knew how to work with anonymous sources while minimizing the risk to them and how to gradually build up a body of circumstantial evidence.
The witness said that a foreign woman who lived there as the prince’s contract wife had died in the residence. and that after her death, her body hadn’t been sent back to her homeland, but had been kept in the palace. She described the room with the body fixed vertically, the rituals performed around it, and conversations between people from the prince’s entourage, in which words such as soul transfer, failed ritual, and side effect were mentioned.
She also mentioned that the death was officially recorded as the result of illness and the body was allegedly cremated, although in fact it remained in the residence. Human rights activists began to compare this information with cases known to them and with publicly available data. In terms of time, country, and profile, the story of Marta Novak fit.
a Polish model who worked in Europe for several years, then disappeared from the public eye, and after some time, her family received news of her sudden death in the United Arab Emirates. Indirect confirmation was found through acquaintances in the modeling world, who knew about her contract with a wealthy man from the Persian Gulf, and that after her departure, she had virtually disappeared from the public eye.
At this stage, two questions had to be resolved. whether it was possible to bring the information to journalists willing to investigate and how to do so without compromising the source within the system. In the end, a semi-doccumentary format was chosen in which real elements, the contract marriage scheme, participation enclosed experiments, death during the procedure, concealment of the body, and its transformation into a ritual object were described without reference to specific legally identifiable names and
exact addresses, but with sufficient detail about the mechanics of what was happening. This approach has already been used in investigations of violence and deaths in private guarded estates where direct identification could lead to immediate reprisals against the sources. Journalists having received the materials compared them with what is already known about the practices of private experiments in closed elite circles.
In various countries, there have been cases where wealthy individuals have funded pseudocientific research into life extension, consciousness transfer, and strengthening spiritual connections in which people were effectively used as test subjects. Such projects as a rule existed at the intersection of marginal science and occult beliefs, circumvented official regulations, and were disguised as private medical or spiritual programs.
The story of Marta Novak fit into this well-known though rarely formalized pattern. A foreigner who found herself dependent on a wealthy person through a contract. Isolation in a residence. Gradual involvement in experimental procedures without independent oversight. Death during a ritualized experiment.
Registration of death as natural. concealment of the body and its functional use in closed religious mystical practices. Human rights activists and journalists were able to convey only part of the information to Martr’s family as they could not reveal their source. The parents were told that the official version of sudden thrombosis and cremation raises serious doubts that there is evidence of death during an unauthorized experiment and that the body wasn’t returned and cremated as they were told.
For the family, this meant an admission that the ashes in the urn most likely belonged to someone else and that their daughter’s real body was in another country in a closed room in a palace where it was being used for rituals. From a legal point of view, the chances of holding Prince Fidel and his entourage accountable remain minimal.
The family has no access to the body, no authentic medical documents, and no official witnesses to the procedure. In the country where this happened, the justice system is de facto dependent on the political and economic elite and the closed residences of the ruling families are beyond any real external control. Precedents where such cases have reached public trial and sentencing for members of the elite are rare and as a rule have been linked either to internal political conflicts or to massive international pressure. As a result, the story of
Marta Novak exists in a borderline zone between fact and unproven accusation. For her relatives, it is the loss of a daughter in circumstances that they can neither verify nor change. For human rights activists, it is yet another case in a series of stories about how closed elite circles use people as a resource for their ideas and experiments and then hide the consequences under a layer of bureaucratic wording and money.
For journalists, it is an example of how a system of contract marriages, privatized spirituality, and private pseudocientific projects can lead to the death of a person who initially hoped only for a chance to earn money and change their social status. At the end of the day, this story seems extremely dry.
There is a Polish citizen who worked as a model and signed a contract with a wealthy man from the United Arab Emirates. She moved into his residence where she lived under strict control. There she was used in an experiment at the intersection of religious rhetoric and neurochnology. During the procedure, she suffered cardiac arrest and died.
Instead of an official investigation and the return of her body to her family, her death was recorded as natural. Her body was imbalmed and left in the palace, turning her into an object of worship. Her parents received an urn with someone else’s ashes and documents stating thrombosis and heart failure. This set of facts, even if it never becomes the subject of a full-fledged criminal case, shows in itself how vulnerable people can be when they find themselves at the intersection of private wealth, closed religious mystical structures, and
uncontrolled experiments. And as long as such stories remain in the shadows, similar practices have a chance to repeat themselves over and over again, changing only the names, countries, and details of the contracts. When Marina Kalskaya disappeared in Dubai, her family received condolences from the embassy, a closed coffin, and documents about a terrible car accident.
When 8 months later, a servant at the Rajasthan Palace photographed a strange bride doll. No one connected these events until they noticed the mole, the very same mole above her left eyebrow that Marina always considered her distinguishing feature. This is a story about how wealth, power, and pathological obsession turned people into collectibles and about how one photograph destroyed the empire of a prince who thought he had bought himself impunity.
Marina Kovalskaya arrived in Dubai on April 23rd, 20s 18. She was 24 years old and had been working as a model in Warsaw for the past 5 years, posing for cataloges and occasionally for cosmetics advertisements. Her career was going well, but not brilliantly. Dubai promised a breakthrough. The contract was offered by Elite Models Middle East, three months of work, shows for luxury brands, photooots for magazines.
The pay was $15,000 a month, plus hotel accommodation, flights, and meals. Marina showed the contract to her mother, who was wary, but her daughter was an adult, experienced, and had worked with various agencies. The first two weeks went well. Marina lived at the Jira Beach Hotel, participated in shows, and got to know other models, photographers, and designers.
She sent her mother photos from the events and talked about her work in messages. Everything looked professional and safe. On May 15th, she was invited to a private event. It was a presentation of a jewelry collection in a private villa, and models were needed to showcase the jewelry. The pay for the evening was $3,000. Marina agreed.
The agency confirmed that the event was legitimate and the client was verified. The villa was located on Palm Jira, a gated elite neighborhood. Marina arrived there in the evening accompanied by a representative of the agency. There were about 30 guests at the villa, all dressed in expensive suits and dresses, staff in white gloves, professional photography.
The atmosphere was sophisticated and respectable. Among the guests was a man of about 35, tall, well-groomed, in an impeccable suit. He introduced himself as Vikram Singh and said he was in the textile business between India and the UAE. He was polite, educated, and spoke English with a slight accent. They talked for about an hour.
He asked about her work, her plans, and was interested in Poland, its culture, and European fashion. When the event ended, Vikram asked for her phone number, saying that he was organizing the next photo shoot for his brand and would like to invite her. Marina gave him the work phone number that the agency had given her for the duration of the contract.
Vicram called 3 days later. He suggested they meet to discuss the details of the photo shoot. They met at a cafe in the Dubai Mall, a public place with lots of people. He showed her the brand’s portfolio, clothing sketches, and shooting plans. Everything looked professional. He offered a fee of $8,000 for two days of work.
Marina agreed, but said that everything had to go through the agency. Vicram nodded and said that his assistant would contact the agency the next day. And so, it happened. The agency confirmed that the client was wellknown and solvent and that the contract was drawn up correctly. The shoot was scheduled for May 26th. The location was a studio in the Alquaz area, an industrial zone with many creative spaces and studios.
Marina arrived in the morning accompanied by another model from the agency, a stylist, a makeup artist, and a photographer. Vikram was present observing the process and offering comments. The shoot went smoothly and professionally. At the end of the day, Vikram thanked everyone and said that the result was excellent.
He paid the agency on the same day. Marina received her fee a week later. After that, Vikram continued to call. He invited her to events and dinners, always in public places, always appropriately. Marina saw this as networking. useful connections for her career. He introduced her to several designers and show organizers.
He seemed like a reliable business contact. On June 10th, he suggested a trip. His family owns a palace in Rajasthan where a traditional ceremony will take place, and they need models with European looks for a cultural photo shoot, a mix of Eastern and Western traditions. It’s a project for an international magazine. The pay is $20,000 for a week’s work with all expenses covered.
Marina hesitated. India, an unfamiliar place, a private event. But Vicram showed her an official invitation from the magazine, a contract, and all the documents looked legitimate. She consulted with the agency. They said that the client was solvent, the documents were in order, but the decision was hers. She agreed.
A ticket was purchased for June 15th, a flight from Dubai to Jaipur. The agency insisted that a representative fly with her. Vikram agreed and paid for an additional ticket. On the evening of June 14th, Vikram called Marina. He said there was a problem. The agency representative couldn’t fly because he was sick, but there was a replacement.
Another agency employee would fly instead of him. Marina called the agency and they confirmed that yes, there would be a replacement. On the morning of the 15th, she arrived at the airport. At the check-in counter, she met a woman who introduced herself as Aisha, an agency employee. She had her passport, documents, everything.
They checked in for the flight, passed through passport control, and boarded the plane. The flight went smoothly, 3 hours to Jaipur. At the airport, they were met by a driver with a sign who loaded their suitcases into a black Toyota Land Cruiser SUV and drove them to the city. Marina texted her mother, sent a photo from the airport, and wrote that she had arrived safely.
The drive took about 40 minutes. The driver was silent, answering only direct questions. Aisha also spoke little, mostly looking at her phone. Marina admired the views, the hot city, bright colors, crowds of people, chaotic traffic. The car turned off the main road onto a secondary road, then again, then drove down a narrow street between old houses.
Marina asked how far it was to the hotel. The driver replied that they were almost there. 5 minutes later, the car stopped near an unremarkable three-story building with faded paint on the walls and air conditioners sticking out of the windows. It didn’t look like a hotel. Marina asked what kind of place it was. Aisha replied that it was temporary accommodation, that the real hotel was still being prepared, and that they would spend one night here.
Marina was wary, but didn’t show it. She got out of the car and took her suitcase. Aisha led her inside the building up a dark staircase to the second floor and opened the door to a room. Inside was a bed, a table, a chair, and an air conditioner. The window had bars. The bathroom was small and adjoining.
Aisha said she needed to rest after the flight, that Vicram would arrive in the evening, and that they would discuss the details of tomorrow’s shoot. She closed the door. Marina heard the lock click from the outside. She tried to open the door. It was locked. She knocked and called out. No one answered.
She tried to call on the phone, but there was no signal. There was no Wi-Fi. Only emergency calls were possible, but she didn’t know the Indian emergency number. She looked out the window, a narrow street below, people walking by, cars passing. She shouted and knocked on the glass. No one paid any attention.
The bars were strong and wouldn’t budge. Marina spent 3 hours in that room. She tried to break down the door, but it was metal and wouldn’t give way. She tried to find something to cut through the bars with, but there was nothing suitable. She started to panic and cry. In the evening, the door opened. Vikram entered, accompanied by two men in dark clothes.
Their faces were serious, no smiles. Marina screamed that this was illegal detention, that she would call the police and the embassy. Vikram calmly said that her phone was not working and would not work, that she was in a private building that belonged to him, that no one knew where she was. She tried to break through to the door, but one of the men stopped her, holding her by the arms.
Vikram took a syringe out of his pocket and said it was a sedative to prevent her from hurting herself. Marina screamed and struggled. The man held her tightly. Vikram injected her in the shoulder. A minute later, Marina felt weak, her legs buckled. The man picked her up and laid her on the bed. Her consciousness was fading.
She tried to speak, but her tongue wouldn’t obey her. Vikram sat on a chair nearby, watching her. The last thing she remembered was him saying, “You’re perfect. You’re exactly what I’ve been looking for.” When Marina didn’t get in touch by the evening of June 15th, her mother became worried.
Usually, her daughter responded quickly, writing about how she was doing and where she was. She wrote a message. It was read, but there was no reply. She called, no answer. By the morning of June 16th, her mother called the agency in Dubai. They said that Marina had flown to Jaipur with an agency representative. They gave her Aisha’s phone number.
Her mother called Aisha who answered. She said that they had arrived safely, checked into a hotel, and Marina was resting. Everything was fine. My mother asked to speak to her daughter. Aisha said that Marina was asleep and she didn’t want to wake her. My mother insisted. Aisha promised that Marina would call back when she woke up.
There was no call. In the evening, the mother called Aisha again, but there was no answer. She called the agency where they said that they had also lost contact with Aisha, but that this was normal as there were communication problems in rural India. On June 17th, her mother went to the Polish embassy in Warsaw.
She explained the situation. The embassy contacted the embassy in Delhi and they began an investigation. They requested information from the agency in Dubai. The agency provided a copy of the contract, airline tickets and the address of the hotel in Jaipur. The embassy in Delhi contacted the hotel. The hotel said that there had been a reservation but the guests had not checked in so the room had been cancelled.
They contacted the local police in Jaipur. The police began a search. On the evening of June 18th, my mother received a call from the embassy in Dubai. An official restrained voice delivered the terrible news. Marina had died in a car accident. The car she was traveling in collided with a truck on the highway between Jaipur and Udipur.
There was a fire, severe burns, and the body was identified by her documents. Her mother did not believe it. It was impossible. Her daughter was in Jaipur at the hotel and was supposed to be on a shoot. What highway? What truck? She demanded explanations, details. She wanted to see the body. The embassy explained, “According to the Indian police, Marina and Aisha were driving to Udipur for a shoot on the lake. There was an accident on the way.
The driver also died. All three burned in the car. The bodies were badly burned, making identification by their faces impossible. They were identified by passports found in the wreckage. The mother demanded an exumation, a DNA test and an independent investigation. The embassy said that according to Indian law, bodies with such burns are cremated quickly in accordance with sanitary standards.
The cremation had already taken place. The ashes will be sent to the family. On June 22nd, the mother received a package, an urn with ashes, a death certificate in English and Hindi, a hospital report, and a police report. All the documents looked official with stamps, signatures, and dates. The report stated, “The accident occurred on June 19th at around 300 p.m.
on National Highway 48. collision with a truck carrying chemicals, fire, three victims, all died at the scene. The mother did not want to believe it, but the documents were official. She hired a lawyer in Poland who contacted a lawyer in India. The Indian lawyer requested the case files. He received a response. The case was closed.
The accident was recognized as an accident caused by the truck driver who fled the scene. The funeral took place on June 29th in Warsaw. A closed coffin with an ern. Mother, father, sister, friends. Everyone was in shock. Unable to comprehend how this could have happened. A young healthy girl went to work and now there were ashes in an urn.
The agency in Dubai paid compensation to the family, $50,000 in insurance. They offered their condolences. A representative of the agency said that Aisha who died with Marina was an experienced escort and that nothing like this had ever happened before. Vikram Singh sent his condolences through the agency.
He wrote that he was shocked by the tragedy, that Marina was an excellent professional and that his family was grieving. He offered additional financial assistance but the family refused. The case was closed. Marina Kovalska officially died on June 19th, 2018 in India in a car accident. But Marina did not die on June 19th. Marina woke up in a white room.
Her head was splitting. Her body felt like cotton wool and her mouth was dry. She tried to get up but couldn’t. Her arms and legs were tied to the bed with soft straps. She looked around. The walls were white. The ceiling was white. and the lamps were bright. To her right was medical equipment, monitors, IVs, and some kind of machines.
On the left was a window covered with curtains. It smelled like antiseptic. She tried to scream, but her voice was weak and horse. A minute later, the door opened and a man in a white coat entered wearing a mask and a cap. He approached the bed and checked the monitor. Marina asked where she was and what was happening.
The man did not answer. He checked the IV, wrote something down on his tablet, and left. She lay there for several hours, periodically falling asleep. When she woke up, she tried to free herself from the straps, but they were strong and would not budge. In the evening, judging by the fact that the light in the window went out, another person came in.
He was also wearing a white coat, but without a mask. He was a man of about 50 with gray hair and attentive eyes. He introduced himself as Dr. Malhotra. He said that she was in a private clinic and that everything would be fine if she cooperated. Marina screamed that she had been kidnapped and demanded to be released.
The doctor calmly explained that she was there under a contract she had signed. The contract provided for a medical procedure for which she would receive a large sum of money. If she refused to cooperate, it would be a breach of contract and the consequences would be unpleasant. Marina screamed that she had not signed any contract for medical procedures, that it was illegal.
The doctor took out a folder and showed her the documents. There was her signature on a contract for voluntary participation in a biological tissue donation program. The date was June 14th. She did not remember signing it, but the signature looked like hers. The doctor said that the signature was certified, the contract was legal, and she had no choice.
The procedure was scheduled for the next day. The doctor said that she would be given anesthesia. She would not feel anything. There would be a recovery period after the procedure and then she would be released with full payment. Marina asked what kind of procedure it was. The doctor replied, “Evasively, collection of donor material. The details are irrelevant.
She didn’t sleep that night. She tried to come up with an escape plan, but her hands and feet were tied, and there was nothing in the room that could be used to cut the straps. The door was locked from the outside. The window was covered with bars. In the morning, two orderlys came, untied her from the bed, but held her by the arms and led her down the corridor.
She saw other wards, some with people lying in beds connected to machines. It all looked like a real clinic, but the atmosphere was eerie, the staff silent, the patients motionless. They took her to the operating room. There was a table, lamps, instruments, and an anesthesiologist. They put her on the table and secured her with straps.
The anesthesiologist put a mask on her face and told her to count to 10. She counted to five and fell into darkness. When she woke up, the pain was unbearable. Her face burned as if it had been dipped in boiling water. She tried to touch her face, but her hands were tied down. She screamed. A nurse came and gave her an injection.
The pain dulled and became bearable. Marina lay there trying to understand what had been done to her. Her face was completely bandaged with only slits for her eyes, nose, and mouth. Dr. Malhotra came in the evening. He said that the procedure had been successful. Now the healing period would begin, which would take several weeks.
She had to lie still, take her medication, and not touch the bandages. Marina asked through the bandages what they had done to her. The doctor replied that they had taken donor material from her face, a skin graft for reconstructive surgery. Her face would heal. Scars would remain, but it could all be corrected with plastic surgery later. She didn’t believe it.
A skin graft did not explain such pain, such extensive bandages, but it hurt to talk, so she fell silent. The days passed. They changed her bandages, gave her painkillers, and fed her through a tube. The pain gradually subsided but remained constant and aching. She felt that something was very wrong with her face.
After 2 weeks, some of the bandages were removed. She was given a mirror. Marina looked and did not recognize herself. Her face was gone. Instead of skin, there was a red raw surface like meat without its membrane. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were in place, but all the skin on her face was gone. It was monstrous. She screamed, dropped the mirror, and began to thrash about hysterically.
The orderlys rushed in, restrained her, and the doctor gave her a sedative injection. She fell back into darkness. When she woke up, Dr. Malhotra was sitting next to her. He explained calmly without emotion. They had removed a full skin graft from her face. All of the epidermis and part of the dermis from her hairline to her chin.
It was a specific procedure requested by the client. Her face would heal, new skin would grow, but it would take months and her face would be scarred. Marina was too shocked to speak. She just lay there staring at the ceiling. She realized that she had been used not as a donor to save someone’s life, but as a source of material for something else.
She asked why they needed the skin from her face. The doctor did not answer. He only said that the contract had been fulfilled and that in a month when the wound had healed, she would be released. But Marina knew they would not release her. People capable of such things do not leave witnesses. 3 weeks passed.
The wound on her face began to heal, covered with a scab and new thin skin. The pain lessened, but she was no longer allowed to look in the mirror. She knew she looked terrible. They stopped giving her strong sedatives, only mild painkillers. Her head cleared. She began to plan her escape. She studied the clinic’s routine, memorizing when the nurses came and when the staff changed shifts.
On the evening of July 27th, when the nurse brought her dinner, Marina pretended to lose consciousness. The nurse was frightened and came closer to check her pulse. Marina hit her on the head with the tray and the nurse fell. Marina jumped out of the ward and ran down the corridor. She didn’t know where to run.
She just ran. She passed several doors, turned the corner, saw the stairs, and rushed down. On the first floor, there was a long corridor at the end of which she could see a glass door, the exit. She ran towards it barefoot in a hospital gown, gasping for breath. She had almost reached the door when someone grabbed her shoulder from behind.
It was a huge, strong, orderly. She tried to break free, screaming and scratching. He held her tight, not letting her go. Dr. Malhotra ran up, followed by two more orderlys. They twisted her arms and dragged her back upstairs. She screamed that they were murderers, that her family was looking for her, that everything would be revealed.
The doctor did not answer. They brought her back to the ward and tied her to the bed. The doctor took out a syringe and filled it with a clear liquid. Marina asked what it was. The doctor replied calmly, “Air.” Injecting air into a vein causes an air embolism. Air bubbles enter the bloodstream and block vessels in the lungs or brain.
Death comes quickly and looks like cardiac arrest. There are almost no traces left. Marina begged, cried, promised to keep quiet, promised anything. The doctor did not listen. He took her hand, found a vein in the crook of her elbow, and inserted the needle. She felt the cold liquid enter her vein, then a sharp pain in her chest.
She couldn’t breathe. Her heart beat fast, then slowed, then stopped. Her last thought was of her mother. Rajes had been working as a servant in the Maharaja’s palace in Jaipur for the last 3 years. It was a lowly position, cleaning, serving food, running errands. The pay was good. The conditions were acceptable.
The palace was huge with dozens of rooms, most of which were off limits to the regular staff. Vikram Singh, the Maharaja’s nephew, lived in a separate wing of the palace. He had a reputation for being eccentric and withdrawn. He kept to himself, rarely interacted with the staff, and spent most of his time in his chambers or traveling to Dubai on business.
Rajes cleaned the common rooms and sometimes the corridors near Vikram’s quarters, but he never entered his rooms. They were cleaned by special servants hired personally by Vikram. But on January 23rd, 2011 19, when Rajesh was passing by Vikram’s rooms, the door was a jar. There was no one inside.
Curiosity got the better of him, and he peeked inside. The room was large and luxuriously furnished, but what caught his attention was a doll standing in the corner by the window. It was humansized, dressed in a wedding sari with jewelry around its neck and hands and a veil on its head. Rajes moved closer. The doll was incredibly realistic. The face looked alive.
the details of the skin, the pores, the slight blush on the cheeks, the eyes were closed, the eyelashes long, the hair was real, light brown, styled in a complex hairstyle. He looked closer. On the doll’s face, above the left eyebrow, there was a mole, small, dark, and next to it, slightly higher, a thin scar, barely noticeable.
Something about this face seemed familiar to him. Rajes couldn’t understand what it was, but the feeling was strong. He took out his phone and photographed the doll. Then he heard footsteps in the hallway and quickly left the room. In the evening in his room, he looked at the photo. The doll’s face was too real, too alive. He enlarged the image and studied the details.
The mole, the scar, the shape of the lips, the slant of the eyes. Rajes spent several hours on the internet, not knowing what he was looking for. He typed in various search terms, realistic dolls, silicone dolls, sex dolls. He found similar products, but none were as detailed. Then he stumbled upon a news article about missing models in Dubai.
He read it out of curiosity. One of the articles mentioned Polish model Marina Kowalsska who died in a car accident in India. There was a photo in the article. Rajes enlarged the photo of the girl. Light hair, European appearance, and above her left eyebrow, a mole. He compared it to the photo of the doll.
The coincidence was impossible to ignore. The same mole in the same place, the same thin scar above the eyebrow. Rajes felt a chill down his spine. It couldn’t be a coincidence. A doll with the face of a dead girl. What did it mean? He began to dig deeper. He found information about Marina’s death, an accident, a fire, cremation.
He found references to Vikram Singh as her last employer. He found references to other models who had disappeared or died in similar circumstances in the region. The more he read, the scarier it became. Marina wasn’t the first. Over the past 5 years, seven young European women who worked as models in Dubai or India had disappeared or died in accidents.
All of them were blonde between the ages of 20 and 27 and all under similar circumstances. Rajes realized he had stumbled upon something terrible, but he didn’t know what to do. Go to the police. with what? A photo of a doll. They wouldn’t listen to him. At best, they would fire him. At worst, accuse him of theft and slander.
He decided to gather more evidence. Over the next few weeks, he tried to get into Vikram’s quarters again, but the door was always locked. Once he saw Vikram enter with a large sealed box labeled fragile, handle with care. On February 15th, Vikram left for Dubai for two weeks. Rajes knew this was his chance.
He bribed the cleaning lady who had the keys to the rooms, gave her 2,000 rupees, said he had forgotten something important inside, and asked her to open the door for 5 minutes. The cleaning lady agreed, opened the door, and said she would wait in the hallway. Rajes went inside. The doll was standing in the same place by the window, but now there were two of them.
The second one stood nearby, also in a wedding dress, also incredibly realistic. The face was different, dark-haired, Asian in appearance. Rajie photographed both dolls from all angles. Then he noticed an album on the shelf, thick with a leather binding. He opened it. Inside were photographs, dozens of photos of beautiful young women.
He recognized some of the faces from news articles about missing persons. Some he saw for the first time. He photographed several pages of the album. Then he noticed some documents on the table. He picked up the top one, a contract with a private clinic in Jaipur for specialized dermatological procedures. He photographed it. Time was running out.
Rajes quickly looked around again and left the room. The cleaning lady closed the door and left. Rees returned to his room, transferred all the photos to his computer, copied them to a flash drive, and hid them. Now he had to decide what to do next. He understood that he had evidence of something terrible in his hands, but he also understood that Vikram Singh was an influential man with money, connections, and protection.
Going to the local police was useless. Everyone there was on his side. Rajes remembered a reporter he had seen on the news investigating corruption in Rajasthan. He found his contacts details on the internet and wrote an anonymous letter with a brief description of the situation. The reply came 3 days later.
The reporter asked for evidence to be sent. Rajes sent some of the photos, the dolls, pages from the album, documents. A week later, the reporter replied that he was starting an investigation and asked for more information about the clinic, Vikram Singh and the missing girls.
Rajes gathered information bit by bit. He eavesdropped on conversations, memorized names and copied documents when he could. After 2 months, the reporter had enough material to publish. The article was published on April 27th, 2019 in a major Indian newspaper. The headline read, “The prince collector, how a rich heir turned missing models into dolls.
” The article was detailed with all the evidence, photographs, and documents that had been collected. It described the scheme. Vikram Singh lured young European models under the pretext of work, staged fake car accidents, officially declared them dead, but in fact took them to a private clinic. There the girls had full-face skin grafts removed which were used to create hyperrealistic bride dolls.
Vikram was obsessed with the idea of owning perfect brides with European looks which he collected in his chambers. After the procedure, the girls were killed and their bodies destroyed. Their families were sent ashes which were actually those of strangers or animals. The clinic created fake death certificates and everything was organized through corrupt officials.
The article caused a scandal. The international media picked up the story. The Polish embassy demanded an investigation. Europole got involved in the case. Indian police arrested Vikram Singh on May 3rd. They searched the palace and seized dolls, documents, and computers. Seven dolls were found in Vikram’s chambers, each with the face of a missing girl.
The clinic in Jaipur was closed and Dr. Malhotra and the entire staff were arrested. Freezers with remains were found in the basement of the clinic. DNA analysis confirmed that these were the bodies of the missing women. The investigation lasted 8 months. It was established that Vikram Singh began his activities in 2014.
There were nine victims in total. Seven were identified, two were not. All were young, beautiful, and of European appearance. all died after their facial skin was removed to create dolls. Vikram did not fully admit his guilt. He claimed that the girls had signed contracts voluntarily and that the procedures were legal, but the evidence was irrefutable.
The trial began in February 2020. Vikram Singh was sentenced to life imprisonment. Dr. Malhotra and three clinic employees also received long prison terms. The families of the victims were paid compensation. Marina’s mother received information that her daughter had indeed died, but not in a car accident, but at the hands of murderers.
It was a small consolation. At least the truth had come out. Rajesa was awarded for his courage and assistance in the investigation. He resigned from the palace, moved to another city, and started a new life. He says that he still sees those dolls standing by the window in his dreams, their frozen, overly lifelike faces, and the mole above the left eyebrow.
Marina Kovalskaya’s story became a warning to thousands of young women dreaming of a career in the modeling business abroad. It became a reminder that behind beautiful contracts and promises of big money, a monstrous truth may lie hidden, and that sometimes a disappearance is not an accident, but a carefully planned crime.
