Dubai dentist fined Dh 1,000 for assaulting wife

DUBAI // A dentist who assaulted his wife, breaking one of her fingers, has been fined Dh1,000.

MR, a 62-year-old American, fought with his 32-year-old Moroccan wife SA, on January 1, after returning from a New Year's Eve celebration. When his wife of more than four years asked him how the celebration went, he told her he spent it with "great women", before starting to insult her and threatening to throw her out of the house. The wife said her husband was often unfaithful, but that she had put up with him hoping he might change, but that instead he became more cruel.

"He then ordered our cook to take my baby girl away from me," said the wife, adding that she begged him not to take away the three-year-old girl or their one-year-old boy.

"He grabbed my fingers and broke them, then kicked me on my legs until I fell down crying and in pain," she said.

The dentist pleaded not guilty to assault, saying that he had planned to take his daughter on a short cruise on his yacht, but that when the cook and his daughter walked towards the door his wife objected and pulled his hair. He said that she threw herself to the floor and screamed loudly to make a show to a French couple who were passing by and told them her daughter was being kidnapped.

The couple came to her aid and retrieved the daughter from the cook. Police were then called and the wife was taken to Rashid Hospital for treatment.

The cook, a 34-year-old from Nepal, said that he had been asked to take the girl for a walk but that the wife did not want this to happen, so she grabbed her husband and began screaming loudly. He said he did not witness either the wife or the husband assaulting the other.

The French man who went to the wife's help said he saw the woman holding her husband's leg in a way that implied she was begging him for something, but said he did not see the husband assault her. "I saw him get loose from her grip and enter the house," he said.

A medical report found the wife to have swelling in her right hand fingers, one of which was broken, and minor bruisings in her legs.

The verdict is being appealed and a next hearing at the Appeals Court was scheduled for December 25.