Court postpones ruling in Kerry Winter death

Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance has postponed making a ruling in the death of Kerry Winter.

Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance today postponed making a ruling in the death of Kerry Winter. Judge Hamad Abdel Latif reserved his judgement this morning until June 7. The trial saw M A, a British former operations director, accused of two different versions of the crime: one in which he dumped Ms Winter's body at sea and one in which he buried it in the desert. Since her disappearance almost 22 months ago, there has been a door-to-door sweep of the southern end of Dubai, a Facebook campaign with almost 7,000 members, a media campaign that included all the local press and some international press and the involvement of British, South African and UAE authorities. More recently, the trial drew the attention of the South African president Jacob Zuma. M A "has produced two different stories to us and then denied the charge; it is up to the courts to find him guilty or innocent, which is going to be tough due to the mere fact that no body was produced", the chief Bur Dubai prosecutor Sami al Shamsi said in March. Prosecutors claim that M A, Ms Winter's ex-boyfriend, stalked her for days before bludgeoning her with a baseball bat. He was arrested five days after she went missing on August 20, 2008, and was charged with premeditated murder. Officials said he stuffed Ms Winter's body in a suitcase, weighted it down and dumped it into the sea. Ms Winter, 36, was last seen outside her villa in al Barsha. Neighbours told prosecutors they saw M A beating her with a baseball bat before dragging her into a car and driving away. * The National