A British TikTok influencer faces death by firing squad after being charged with the premeditated murder of her boyfriend in Dubai. Brooke George, 23, from Gravesend, Kent, was arrested at Dubai airport on 22 June as she tried to board a flight home. She is accused of stabbing 26-year-old William Treeby, also from Kent, whom she met online and travelled to the UAE to visit.
The advocacy group Detained in Dubai said George claims she acted in self-defence during a violent attack. According to Radha Stirling, the group’s chief executive, the relationship turned abusive on George’s second trip to Dubai. Stirling said George told them her partner became “increasingly controlling and abusive”, and that she was trying to leave after he allegedly punched her, withheld her passport, and then attacked her again at their apartment. George claims she “feared for her life and, reaching for a kitchen knife within her grasp, acted in self defence”.
“British TikTok influencer Brooke George, 23, faces death by firing squad after being charged with murder in Dubai.”
Her mother, Thereza George, described her daughter’s terror. “The day before the incident, she did not seem like herself. She was quieter and not her usual happy, cheerful self,” she said. “When I spoke to Brooke right after the incident, she was absolutely terrified. I have never seen my daughter so frightened in my life. She was crying uncontrollably. I could see that one of her eyes was badly swollen and was beginning to close.”
George, a former John Lewis employee and TikTok influencer, had described her first visit to Dubai as “the time of my life”. But on the second trip, the dynamic shifted. Treeby, according to sources cited by the Daily Mail, allegedly became intoxicated and assaulted her in Jumeirah Village. George contacted her family in panic after being repeatedly punched, and arranged a flight home with friends’ help. When she returned to the apartment to collect her passport, she found her belongings scattered and says she was punched in the face when she begged for it back. She grabbed a kitchen knife, stabbed Treeby, retrieved her passport, and fled. She was arrested at the airport.
Detained in Dubai said George is being held at Bur Dubai Police Station, where she has allegedly been forced to strip naked in front of male officers without a female officer present – a treatment she called “deeply humiliating and distressing”. Her family says she has been denied legal representation and cannot understand proceedings due to a language barrier.
Stirling called for George to be released on bail and for the case to be treated as domestic violence. “Investigators must consider the possibility Brooke was a victim of serious violence, not just a suspect,” she said.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was supporting a British woman detained in the UAE and her family. If convicted, George faces execution under UAE law. Her mother said: “I firmly believe she was desperately trying to get home and away from whatever had happened to her.”