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Killing Time: Surviving Dubai's Most Notorious Prisons
As seen in BBC3's documentary series Surviving a Dubai Drugs Bust, Karl Williams describes being banged up in brutal conditions in this gritty autobiography.Karl was on holiday in Dubai, living it large with two English friends, when they were accused of drug dealing, arrested, and tortured by police. They were innocent, but the authorities didn't care. And so began their year-long nightmare as they were locked up in Port Rashid where prisoners of all nationalities were crammed into stinking cells, violence could erupt in seconds, and control of the jail was in the hands of a few powerful inmates. Unless you knew the right people and could work the system, you were screwed.Karl managed to rise up the prison pecking order, making friends with local gangsters, Russian mafia and other assorted murderers, drug dealers, fraudsters and hapless innocents he encountered behind bars. But it was hard to stay positive when facing life or the death penalty . . . and then he was moved to the notorious Central prison, a terrifying place where HIV positive prisoners were used by gangsters to infect their enemies; and murders and rape were common. When Karl had lost all hope of finding justice, Reprieve, an organization of committed human rights defenders, took up his case.Raw, totally gripping, and at times brutally funny, Killing Time takes you behind the shiny desert paradise to the heart of the real Dubai.
355 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 7, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 4, 2019
harrowing and well written account of an innocent man's journey into the brutal Dubia penal system, arrested and tortured until his arm breaks, Karl then has to fit in with deadly prisoners and avoid getting raped
August 14, 2023
What a true story that we should learned that human right abuse against humankind should stop immediately.
February 1, 2019
I have read over 50 books that fall in the same category as this book.
First of all, I have some doubts on whether the truth is told in this book. Who on earth goes to “party” in Dubai for a period of several months, just 3 months after your first baby is born. This whilst you have a relationship with the mother.
When you figure he has no job and is apprehended in Dubai with a large quantity of so-called “spice” (a synthetic marihuana variant sold in, you guessed right, the UK), alarm bells start to ring... Some people that he met on a prior trip to Dubai, seem to “coincidentally” also turn up in jail. One of them even had similar charges: i.e. spice.
As such, it becomes difficult to deny he wasnt involved in drugs. This instead of his story that spice was planted/left in the vehicle he was using.
That he also becomes the main dealer of illegal stuff (stimulants, phones, ...) in jail, shows to me all the more that this author may in fact really be guilty of dealing drugs (Spice). His activities IN JAIL earnt him apparently 200 GBP per day. Quite some money I would say... He sends it home to support his wife. This is not the behavior of an innocent person I would say...
What is further strange, is that the author doesnt know the difference between jail and prison:
* Jail is part of the sheriff’s or police department. You are in jail during the part when you are presentenced. Jails are often more restrictive whereby you also have a high mix of people that will be in the system for a relative short time.
* Prison is where you go to after you have been convicted. The mix in the prison includes way more hardened criminals (murderers, rapists, kidnappers, ...). As such it is way more violent.
The author constantly mixes up the terms in the book. Since the author resides in the jail system for the most part of the book, title of the book should not be “... most notorious prisons” but “... most notorious jails”. And where he resided was really not that notorious if I read what all was possible.
He actually was only very shortly in the real prison system (“Central”) and then you read about murders, shankings, slicings, ... So this book is relatively mild since it is almost all in the non-violent jail system.
Okay... So what should I now give as a rating to this book...? Well, the positive thing is that the storyline is actually quite interesting. So I think it belongs somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. In he end I chose to give it four stars, but it wasnt easy to decide. But I regard this book as partially fiction (as mentioned above, some things are difficult to believe).
First of all, I have some doubts on whether the truth is told in this book. Who on earth goes to “party” in Dubai for a period of several months, just 3 months after your first baby is born. This whilst you have a relationship with the mother.
When you figure he has no job and is apprehended in Dubai with a large quantity of so-called “spice” (a synthetic marihuana variant sold in, you guessed right, the UK), alarm bells start to ring... Some people that he met on a prior trip to Dubai, seem to “coincidentally” also turn up in jail. One of them even had similar charges: i.e. spice.
As such, it becomes difficult to deny he wasnt involved in drugs. This instead of his story that spice was planted/left in the vehicle he was using.
That he also becomes the main dealer of illegal stuff (stimulants, phones, ...) in jail, shows to me all the more that this author may in fact really be guilty of dealing drugs (Spice). His activities IN JAIL earnt him apparently 200 GBP per day. Quite some money I would say... He sends it home to support his wife. This is not the behavior of an innocent person I would say...
What is further strange, is that the author doesnt know the difference between jail and prison:
* Jail is part of the sheriff’s or police department. You are in jail during the part when you are presentenced. Jails are often more restrictive whereby you also have a high mix of people that will be in the system for a relative short time.
* Prison is where you go to after you have been convicted. The mix in the prison includes way more hardened criminals (murderers, rapists, kidnappers, ...). As such it is way more violent.
The author constantly mixes up the terms in the book. Since the author resides in the jail system for the most part of the book, title of the book should not be “... most notorious prisons” but “... most notorious jails”. And where he resided was really not that notorious if I read what all was possible.
He actually was only very shortly in the real prison system (“Central”) and then you read about murders, shankings, slicings, ... So this book is relatively mild since it is almost all in the non-violent jail system.
Okay... So what should I now give as a rating to this book...? Well, the positive thing is that the storyline is actually quite interesting. So I think it belongs somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. In he end I chose to give it four stars, but it wasnt easy to decide. But I regard this book as partially fiction (as mentioned above, some things are difficult to believe).
January 2, 2025
A grippingly honest account of a horrendous ordeal
I couldn’t put this book down. Terrifying but at the same time heartening to read about the bonds human beings can develop under the toughest of circumstances, a true reflection of the strength we might have within us we just don’t realise it
I couldn’t put this book down. Terrifying but at the same time heartening to read about the bonds human beings can develop under the toughest of circumstances, a true reflection of the strength we might have within us we just don’t realise it
February 6, 2017
Not bad but I read better
November 24, 2021
I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting to see how they were treated and how bad the justice system is
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews