The final 6 girls, which were placed in the group given to Dannii Minogue to work with for this season of “X Factor”, and the show’s crew were detained by security at a Dubai airport. Staff at the airport had become suspicious of their reason for visiting the country, fearing the girls may be there to film a vulgar pop video or that they were going to make a negative show about the United Arab Emirates’ customs. A show spokesman confirmed that the crew and girls were held by security for about 5 hours.

A source said that Dannii panicked about what happened to the girls when they didn’t show up hours past their scheduled time. Many countries have arrangements in place for camera crews to fly abroad for filming, the source added, but Dubai’s laws are much stricter.

The 6 girls include Despina Pilavitaz, Nicole Jackson, Stacey McClean, Rachel Adedeji, Stacey Solomon, and Lucie Jones. They were in the country in order to complete the judges’ houses phase of the competition. The 6 had flown to join Dannii and Kylie Minogue, the judge’s pop star sister. The sisters are to cut the group in half so that only 3 will go on to do the live shows.

The final 24 contestants were chosen and broken up into categories this past weekend. Simon Cowell is in charge of the over 25s group, Louis Walsh is responsible for the bands, and Cheryl Cole was given the group of boys. All of the groups will be cut to only 3 in every category for this weekend’s shows, which will be a 2-hour marathon.