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Jail Term of Man who Harassed Women on Beach Reduced

DUBAI — The Court of Appeals on Tuesday reduced the six-month jail term given by a lower court to an accountant in a sexual harassment case to three months.

The court, however, upheld his deportation order as well as the three-month jail sentence given to his accomplice, also an accountant.

On June 25, the Court of First Instance sentenced the first and second Arab defendants to six-month and three-month jail terms, respectively, for sexually harassing and insulting two Uzbekistani women on the Sufouh beach. Only the first defendant was sentenced for deportation by the court after serving his jail term.

During trial, defence counsel Hani Hammouda of Bin Haidar for Advocacy and Legal Consultancy had termed the plaintiffs’ allegations as “contradictory and malicious”.

“They gave statements to the police and then gave different and contradictory information to the Public Prosecution. All the four were having fun on the beach when suddenly the two women became impatient and wanted to leave. They instantly called the police,” Hammouda told the court panel.

One of the women, a 30-year-old business partner, told the prosecution that the incident happened in the afternoon of March 14 on the beach in Sufouh area. “I was with my compatriot friend while my husband was swimming when the two men approached me with another person. They were holding bottles of liquor and asked to borrow the football that I had. I gave it to them so that they would leave us alone as they were not sober,” the woman said.

A few minutes later, the same men came back and asked her and her companion to drink alcohol with them. “I told them that I am a Muslim and I don’t drink,” she said. As she asked the men to go before her husband arrived, the man (whose jail term was reduced) threw the drink on her. When her friend warned the men that she would call the cops, the same man said he was not afraid and called the women “prostitutes”. “He said he was not afraid as we are ‘prostitutes’ and that he was flying very soon to Thailand,” she alleged.

The woman claimed that he fondled her while taking the football from her.

The defendants fled the place after they heard the women calling the cops.

The second defendant was accused of threatening the other woman that he would beat and break her face if she did not let him run away.

mary@khaleejtimes.ae