By Issy Clarke

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Police accessed the closed WhatsApp group chat, saved the evidence and told the man to come to a meeting before arresting him.

The offending image showed smoke rising above a building after the March 2026 strikes and had only been shared in the private group chat.

He remains in detention on charges including publishing information deemed harmful to state interests, the maximum sentence of which is two years.

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Radha Stirling, chief executive of London-based advocacy group Detained in Dubai, said Dubai police had "explicitly confirmed they are conducting electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages."

She said people were being tracked, identified, and arrested not for public statements, but for private exchanges between colleagues."

'Companies like WhatsApp must answer urgent questions about user privacy." she added.

Ms Stirling continued: "If private communications can be detected and used as the basis for arrest by overreaching or hypersensitive states, users worldwide need clarity on how their data is being accessed."

The police report said authorities learned of the material's existence "'through electronic monitoring operations".

A special team from the Electronic and Cybercrime Department was told to find the account holder who shared the video.

The airline worker was tracked down, lured to a meeting and arrested by police.

The case was then escalated to State Security Prosecution. He remains in detention.

The UAE government owns majority holdings in telecom companies Etisalat and Du. This gives security services the power to observe all communications on their networks.

The Arab state has also used the Israeli-developed software Pegasus which allows agents to listen into private calls and read messages, even if they are shared on encrypted apps like WhatsApp,.

The spyware can infect a device even without the user activating a link - such as via a WhatsApp call, even if it isn't answered.

Once inside, it can access all WhatsApp messages, logos and contacts.

Ms Stirling said other tourists, airline crew and residents have reported being detained for sending, receiving or keeping content even when they did not share it.