What was meant to be a dream job in Dubai turned into a nightmare for 21-year-old Isabella Daggett, a British woman now stuck in a grim prison cell under disturbing conditions. Arrested on unknown drug-related charges, Isabella has been held in what her family describes as a “hellhole,” with no access to basic hygiene or clean clothes.
Isabella, a recruitment consultant and co-director of a modeling agency, was barely settled into her new life in the UAE when she was swept up in a police raid. Her family says she hasn’t had a proper shower in over a month and has worn the same clothes for three. The physical toll is just one part of the trauma; emotionally, she’s isolated and overwhelmed.
Her grandmother, Heather Smith, insists Isabella is innocent, saying, “She was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people.” Drug tests reportedly came back clean, yet Isabella remains behind bars with little communication and no answers.
Before the arrest, Isabella had been living a relatively ordinary life in the UK, working for a construction recruiter and modeling part-time on Instagram. Her glamorous photos caught the eye of an agency in Dubai, which offered her a chance to work abroad; a chance she eagerly took.
But within weeks, her situation took a terrifying turn.
“She called me a week before she was arrested,” Heather recalled. “She said something felt wrong and she was planning to come home. Then, this happened.”
After a housing plan fell through, Isabella ended up staying with a man she barely knew. He was arrested alongside her, and while the charges remain vague, Isabella’s family firmly believes she’s being held without cause.
Since March, her living conditions in Dubai have been described as appalling.
“She hasn’t had a shower in a month. No change of clothes in three. Women in there are treated worse than men,” Heather said. “The male prisoners get time outside and even video games. Bella has nothing.”
Her family admits they had warned her about the strict laws in Dubai.
“We told her to follow the rules. But she wasn’t trying to break them,” Heather said. “She got caught in someone else’s mess.”
To fight back, Isabella’s mother, Lucinda Smith, launched a fundraiser on May 20—the goal: £5,500 ($7,450) to cover legal fees and travel costs. “We have proof she wasn’t involved in any crime,” Lucinda wrote. “The conditions she’s in would break any mother’s heart.”
Lucinda and Isabella had big plans before this ordeal.
Earlier this year, they launched a modeling company together, The Global Model Agency Ltd., a hopeful step into the fashion world that now seems worlds away.
Lucinda has remained silent publicly, but her actions speak volumes. Behind the scenes, she’s doing everything possible to bring her daughter home from a place she never expected to become a prison.
