DUBAI // An Uzbek woman who was sentenced to seven years in jail for threatening to blow up the Public Prosecution building with a bomb belt will appear at the Dubai Court of Appeal.
Zulfiya Hamraeva, 33, and her Emirati accomplice, MY, 28, who was sentenced to two years, both appealed their sentences.
Hamraeva received her sentence with loud screams and repeated “Allah Akbar, Allah is sufficient for me and He is the best guardian,” when the verdict was announced earlier this month at the Dubai Criminal Court.
MY was convicted with aiding and abetting Zulfiya by making the device. The judge also ordered that Hamraeva to be deported following her sentence.
A date for the first hearing at the appeal court has not yet been set.
At midday on September 1 last year, Hamraeva walked up to the reception desk of the Public Prosecution building accompanied by her son. She then opened her abaya to reveal the belt.
She claimed the child was the result of an affair with an Emirati and threatened to detonate the explosives unless a paternity test was carried out.
After nearly 14 hours of negotiations, she was taken into custody and the bomb belt was found to be an elaborate fake.
During the subsequent court hearings, the alleged father of the child, JSA, said he had met Hamraeva in 2003 and 10 days later she claimed she was pregnant by him.
She filed a lawsuit against the Emirati in Ajman to prove his paternity, but she lost and was jailed for a month.
Then in 2007 she filed another lawsuit in Sharjah, but the court refused to hear the case based on the earlier Ajman ruling.
JSA said that on August 10 she had sent him a picture of the explosive belt but he did not take her threats seriously.
salaamir@thenational.ae
