A gang of sex traffickers who held a woman captive for several days before leaving her paralysed after throwing her from the balcony of a third-floor Dubai apartment have lost an appeal against their life sentences.
The five men, all from Bangladesh, were convicted in 2006 of kidnap, attempted murder, running a brothel and facilitating prostitution.
They had lured the victim, also from Bangladesh, to the apartment in Al Baraha in October 2005 on the pretense she would begin work as a maid for a family in the emirate.
But she discovered several women working as prostitutes at a brothel operating out of the apartment.
When she refused to work for them she was subjected to a series of assaults over a five-day period and held against her will.
She was later dragged by her legs and thrown from the balcony.
She was found by a passer-by who took her to hospital, where she remained in a critical condition for nearly a week.
She suffered several fractures and doctors said she would be paralysed from the waist down for the rest of her life.
The hospital treating her alerted police, who launched an investigation that led to the arrest of the five men.
After she regained consciousness, she told police about her ordeal.
“I lived with the first defendant’s family for two months during which I was looking for work,” the woman told the court.
She said he told her that he found her a job and took her along with the four other men in a taxi to where she thought she would work as a maid.
“When we arrived at the one-bedroom apartment, it was divided into four sections and in each one there was a woman with a man," she said.
Her mobile phone was taken from her and she was told she would have to work as a prostitute or she would be sold.
“They beat me up every day and one of them tried to rape me but he couldn’t because I resisted him,” she told judges.
“On the day of the incident, my powers failed me and I couldn’t defend myself any more and it was then when I heard them say that I must be killed so I don’t cause them trouble.”
The men, who were aged between 22 and 32 at the time, were each sentenced to life in prison, followed by deportation.
Two of them received additional prison terms for charges of running a brothel and forcing women into prostitution.
They filed for early release after 15 years in prison, but the appeal was rejected.
A second request filed a year later was also declined.
In its verdict against the men’s third request, Dubai Criminal Court said: “The crime they have committed revealed unstable characters and the time they have served was not enough to deter them, and for that the court does not approve their request.”
