Man jailed over murder in Dubai shopping centre parking lot

An Afghan shop owner has been found guilty of strangling a Pakistani man and then stabbing him to death in the parking lot of a shopping centre in Dubai. The Court of First Instance sentenced him to 15 years in jail, to be followed by deportation. The court cleared his brother of the premeditated murder charge.
The incident, which was caught on surveillance cameras, took place on October 9, 2017, in a shopping centre parking lot in Al Muraqqabat.
"I was on duty, when at 11.10pm I spotted on the surveillance cameras two men dragging another and forcing him inside a car trunk. They were in the basement level parking," a Pakistani security guard said. "I immediately called my colleague. When the two men saw me, they dropped the injured man and drove off. I kept the mall visitors away from the area where the victim was, and called the police."
The victim looked lifeless and had a stab wound in the chest, the guard told the prosecutor.
The guard added the two brothers ran an abaya shop in the centre and they had a parking card which opens the gate in the basement level.
A police lieutenant told the prosecutor he was informed about the incident at 11.45pm. "We moved to the crime scene. The ambulance and forensics team were already there. The two security guards showed us the CCTV footage that caught the fatal assault on the victim. The victim was with the brothers in their car, when one of them tried to strangle him with a piece of cloth. The victim, whose shirt was then removed, stepped off their car and they chased him, before stabbing him several times. They then tried to force him inside their 4WD trunk.
"We looked for the two defendants at their shop and at their house in the Naif area. Based on a tip-off from a reliable source, we nabbed them later in Al Ain industrial area and we learned they were about to flee the country. They confessed they killed the victim over some disputes," the officer said.
During investigation, the two brothers confessed they had discussed killing the victim a few days before the day of the incident. They claimed the victim and his partners had duped them of a large amount of money.
They admitted they had disposed of their clothes and the knife in a garbage bin outside their house. A piece of cloth, with which they strangled the victim, was found at their place. It was covered with the blood of one of them.
The CCTV footage was used as public prosecution evidence.
The verdict remains subject to appeal by the convict and the public prosecution.
mary@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai