ABU DHABI // An appeals court on Monday overturned the judicial verdict closing a school after a little girl died on one of its buses.
Two people convicted over the child’s death also had their sentences reduced, a third was acquitted of one charge and a fourth was completely cleared.
Nizaha Aalaa, 3, a KG1 pupil at Al Worood Academy Private School in Abu Dhabi, died from suffocation on October 7 last year after she was accidentally locked inside the bus.
In February the school bus driver and supervisor were sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for negligence, the bus company owner was sentenced to six months and fined Dh500,000, a school administrator was given a suspended three-year sentence and the school was ordered to be shut down.
But on Monday the Abu Dhabi Court of Appeals reduced the driver’s sentence to six months and the supervisor’s to one year. They will each still have to pay a Dh20,000 fine.
The transport company owner was cleared of recruiting two employees not under his sponsorship, employing untrained and unlicensed bus attendants and recruiting drivers who did not have permits.
But the court upheld his conviction and six-month sentence for endangering children’s lives by driving them in buses that were not licensed for school transport.
All of those convicted were ordered to pay blood money to Nizaha’s family.
The Appeals Court also reversed the ruling by the Court of Misdemeanours that the school should be closed, but upheld a fine of Dh50,000 and an order for the payment of Dh100,000 in blood money.
The school’s future remains unclear. Within weeks of the child’s death the Abu Dhabi Education Council, the emirate’s schools regulator, revoked Al Worood’s operating licence.
Comment from Adec as to whether its decision would also be reconsidered was unavailable.
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