A British woman is facing jail for a peck on the cheek in Dubai this week. Charlotte Adams and Ayman Najafi have already been convicted of illegal drinking and indecency following a recent incident in a burger bar and are currently facing an appeals court before the sentence is carried out.

A local woman reported the couple to police for what she described as passionate kissing and touching. A previous hearing found the pair guilty and sentenced them to a months imprisonment and deportation on release.

The couple are claiming that all they actually engaged in was a peck on the cheek as a greeting in the way that Brits have adopted continental standards over recent weeks. The pair, both from London, met in a principality while working and holidaying there.

The story came to light after an Emirati woman, who was with her children having a meal in the restaurant, saw the pair. She claimed she saw the two kissing each other in public and she called the police who came and arrested them. But later on she told the public prosecutors that it was actually one of her children who saw my clients kissing and not her. She is not sure about the incident. They both kissed each other on cheek and that is a normal greeting in their culture, not a crime.

The case is merely the latest in a long string of cases where Westerners have found themselves on the wrong end of the law in the Gulf mostly through sheer ignorance. Most famously Vince Acors and Michelle Palmer were imprisoned for three months for having sex on Jumeirah Beach, which first brought public attention to the vast legal and cultural gulf between the UK and countries in the Middle East.

Companies in the Gulf are desperate to attract Western know-how and language skills to the region in order to fill the many jobs in a Dubai that demand technical specialisms and international co-ordination, but these instance serve to highlight that the region is still a long way away from its Western neighbours in terms of culture. For all the art galleries, shopping malls and football stadia, the region is still highly informed by strict interpretation of Islamic law and young Europeans, away from home for the first time (and often paid extremely well in glamourous surroundings) find it very easy to fall foul of the law.

The case continues and is expected to reach a conclusion this week.