DUBAI // A drunk man who dragged a woman from a lift and forced her into an apartment to rape her was sentenced to one year in jail for kidnapping, but acquitted of an attempted rape charge.
SM, 40, Filipino, was saved from rape by the doorbell.
On February 3, after visiting a friend in Boulevard City Suites in Al Qusais, the Emirati defendant AJ, 26, got into the lift with the victim.
When the lift stopped on the seventh floor, AJ put his hand on her shoulder.
"No, no," said SM, but AJ grabbed her around the waist and dragged her into a corridor to an apartment.
"He knocked on the door and another man opened, then he pushed me inside," SM said, according to prosecutors' records.
Frightened, she begged a drunken AJ to let her go and continued screaming in an attempt to attract attention.
"He made a sign on his neck implying that he would cut my throat if I continued screaming," SM said.
The doorbell rang and when the defendant opened the door, SM rushed outside and ran down the stairs from the seventh floor.
"The staircase was dark and I was scared and hysterical," she said.
AJ denied the charges of attempted rape, kidnapping and consumption of alcohol.
Prosecutors said AJ consumed five glasses of whisky before the incident. He was fined Dh1,000 for drinking.
AB, a 24-year-old Indian accountant, testified that he was with the defendant and a number of women at the hotel in Al Qusais consuming alcohol.
"A dispute erupted between AJ and another man and shortly after I heard a woman screaming: "Don't kill me, I don't want to die", AB told prosecutors.
AB said he saw the woman running outside the flat when the defendant opened the door for his Moroccan girlfriend.
SM reported the incident to police a week after it happened, and they extracted surveillance camera recordings which showed a man dragging a woman from the lift and through the corridor.
salamir@thenational.ae