Guide · updated 31.07.2026 · 13 min read · Lucent Legal team

You or Someone You Know Was Arrested in the UAE: What to Do in the First 48 Hours

If you're reading this because you, your partner, a relative, or a colleague was just arrested, the first thing to do is breathe. Panicking and calling everyone you know rarely helps in the first few hours — it usually just adds noise. The UAE system is strict, but it isn't chaotic: there are fixed legal deadlines, a detained person has specific rights, and relatives outside the country do have real — if slow — channels for getting information.

Below, step by step: what happens after an arrest, how long detention can legally last before charges are filed, how the right to a phone call, an interpreter, consular access, and a lawyer actually work, and what you should absolutely not do in the first few hours. All figures and procedures below come from official and legal sources, linked at the end.

What happens in the first hours after an arrest

An arrest in the UAE can happen in different ways: at the scene of an alleged offence, following a complaint (including a financial one — a separate topic on its own), on a warrant, or at the border when leaving the country. Whatever the trigger, the same legal process kicks in, governed by Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2022 on the Criminal Procedures Law.

The first stage is police custody. The detainee is supposed to be informed of the nature of the accusation and of the right to remain silent. This doesn't always happen the way it's dramatized in American cop shows — sometimes it's a line in a paperwork record rather than a spoken statement, so if nobody read you your rights out loud, that doesn't mean they don't apply.

Rights of a detained person: what applies from minute one

Regardless of nationality, a person detained in the UAE has a set of basic rights, confirmed by legal sources and embassy guidance:

• To be informed of the accusation — in general terms, what you're being held for.
• The right to remain silent — you're not obligated to answer questions before a lawyer arrives; anything you say can be used in the case.
• The right to an interpreter, if you don't speak Arabic — during police questioning, before the prosecution, and in court.
• The right to speak with a lawyer privately and get advice from them.
• The right to a phone call — sources generally describe this as one call to a relative or lawyer; international calls may be restricted while local ones are usually allowed, but in practice this is set by the detention facility's administration rather than one hard nationwide rule.
• The right to humane treatment, medical care, and freedom from coercion during questioning.
• The right to consular notification or a visit — covered separately below.

Worth being honest here: the right to a free, state-appointed lawyer barely functions in practice in the UAE — according to sources, a court-appointed defender is mainly available for cases carrying the death penalty or serious national-security crimes. In most ordinary cases, you have to hire your own lawyer.

How long can someone be held before charges — under UAE criminal procedure

This is the part relatives abroad usually care about most: how long can someone be held without a clear explanation. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2022, the process looks like this:

1. Police → 48 hours. From the moment of arrest, police must forward the case file to the Public Prosecution within 48 hours.
2. Prosecution → 24 hours to question. After receiving the case, the prosecution must question the detainee within 24 hours and decide whether to release them or hold them for further investigation.
3. First detention order → 7 days. If the prosecution decides to detain, the initial order runs for 7 days.
4. Prosecution extension → up to 14 more days. The prosecution can extend detention by up to another 14 days — up to 21 days total at the prosecution level, roughly matching the UK consulate's own estimate of "about 21 days for investigation."
5. Beyond that — only through the courts. Any further extension needs a criminal court order, which can renew detention in further increments, commonly cited as up to 30 days at a time.

In practice, per the same consular source, cases often don't reach court until three months or more after arrest — the law's deadlines cap each individual extension, but don't guarantee the case moves quickly overall. If you want to check separately whether a case is registered against someone and what stage it's at, that's covered in detail in our guide on checking a police case in the UAE.

The phone call: who to call and how

If the detainee has the right to a call, a sensible order of steps:

1. Call the person closest to you, in the country or abroad, so someone on the outside knows what's happening and can start acting.
2. Give as much precise detail as you can: where the arrest happened, which police station you're at (if known), and whether there's already a specific charge or things are still "being looked into."
3. Ask that person to start looking for a local lawyer immediately — the sooner a lawyer is involved, the sooner they can request the official case status and be present at questioning.
4. If an international call won't go through but a local number will, use it — whether a call can be local or international is generally decided by the detention facility's administration, not a single nationwide rule.

Interpreter: a right, not a courtesy

If you don't understand Arabic well enough to follow legal language, the right to a qualified interpreter applies at every stage — police questioning, before the prosecution, and in court — and according to sources, this right can't be waived by the investigation on its own initiative. Worth knowing in practice: the court's official interpreter usually translates what the judge says directly to the defendant, not the entire proceeding — so for fully understanding consultations with your lawyer or the details of a hearing, it can be worth (and is legally permitted) bringing your own interpreter if the appointed one clearly isn't up to the specifics of your case.

The consulate: real help, but not a "get out free" call

Under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a foreign national who is detained has the right to have their consulate notified and to receive a consular visit. Depending on your nationality, your embassy and consular section will be located in specific emirates — official contact details are published on each embassy's own website, and that's where you should look, not through intermediaries. (The Russian version of this guide has the specific contacts for Russian and CIS citizens.)

It's important to be realistic about the limits of consular help: a consulate can notify relatives, arrange a visit, and hand over a list of local lawyers, generally staying involved through the process — but it cannot get someone released, influence a court, or secure special treatment just because of nationality. Other consulates (the UK's, for instance) say the same thing about these same UAE procedures: help exists, but it doesn't replace a local lawyer and doesn't override local law. One more thing worth knowing: consular help tends to work faster if the citizen was already registered with their consulate beforehand — without that, the initial notification and first contact can simply take longer.

Lawyer: when and how to bring one in

The right to contact a lawyer applies from the first hours, and it's worth using right away rather than "waiting to see if it blows over":

1. Look for a local advocate licensed to appear in UAE courts — proceedings run in Arabic, and according to sources, only locally licensed advocates have direct rights of audience in court; international law firms often lack that direct access and work through local partners instead.
2. Agree on cost upfront, in writing — legal aid (a free lawyer) doesn't exist for most ordinary cases, and the cost falls entirely on the detainee or their family.
3. Have the lawyer request the official case status — what stage it's at, whether there's a motion to extend detention, whether a prosecution interview date has been set.
4. If deportation could follow the case, it's worth understanding that process ahead of time too — see our guide on deportation from the UAE: grounds and what happens next.

What not to do, under any circumstances

• Don't sign any document in Arabic that you don't understand. This is a direct recommendation from consular services: demand a certified translation before signing anything — including questioning records and any "confession"-style statements.
• Don't agree to informal arrangements like "they'll just let you go if..." The official process is the only reliable path; unofficial promises in this situation guarantee nothing.
• Don't try to contact the other party or "sort it out" directly, especially with any pressure or threats — that tends to create new legal risk rather than solve the original problem.
• Don't delete messages or destroy documents that could relate to the case — that can look far worse than whatever the disputed messages actually said.
• Don't delay finding a lawyer, and don't rely on the consulate alone — a consulate informs and supports, but it doesn't represent you in court and doesn't check the procedural details of your case for you.

When you definitely need a lawyer

Almost always, once detention runs past a few hours. A lawyer is especially necessary if:

• the prosecution has extended detention past the first 7 days;
• the charge is serious (financial fraud, drugs, offences against a person);
• the detainee doesn't speak Arabic and isn't confident the interpreter at questioning is translating accurately;
• relatives are outside the UAE and need an official case status and a point of contact;
• there's reason to think deportation or a travel ban will follow the case.

We don't give — and can't give — any guarantee of outcome, timeline, or release, because every case is different and detention and charging decisions rest with the prosecution and the courts. At this stage, a lawyer's job isn't to promise anything — it's to establish the exact stage of the case and make sure procedural deadlines don't slip by unnoticed.

This material is for information only and is not legal advice. UAE law changes — a lawyer will assess how it applies to your situation.