DUBAI // A police officer kidnapped a 27-year-old woman on her way home from a night out and raped her, a court heard this morning.
SA, 26, from Oman, is charged with rape and kidnapping, both of which he denied in the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance this morning.
Prosecutors said that on June 7, the woman, from Morocco, left her job at the Montreal Hotel about 2am and joined two friends for shisha.
The woman, who has been in the UAE about 18 months, took a taxi home about 3:30am. She said SA and two other men stopped the cab and ordered the driver to hand over his registration and license because he had been blocking traffic.
The woman and one of her friends got out of the cab. That friend took a different taxi home, leaving the woman alone waiting for a taxi.
"Every time a taxi stopped, [SA] would make him leave, so we had an argument about it and he told me he could have me referred to the police station," the woman said. She said she believed he was a police officer because she saw him show his military ID to the taxi driver.
She said SA told her he could drive her to her apartment in Mutaina area. She got into his Land Cruiser, where, she said, "he told me I lacked manners, as did all Moroccans, and that he will teach me manners."
He took the vehicle off road for about 10 minutes before stopping the car and pulling her out of her seat by her hair, she said.
She said he forced her into oral sex, raped her, then drove away, leaving her in the desert without her belongings or mobile phone.
But she said he returned about 15 minutes later and drove her to her friend's apartment in Sharjah.
"When he dropped me off, he said I was the fifth Moroccan he raped and that his father is a senior official in police and I can't harm him," the woman said.
She and her friend reported the incident to police immediately after he left, records show.
Both her friends confirmed her version of events during prosecution investigations.
A policeman testified that he saw surveillance video from the camera outside the hotel where the women were having shisha. He said he saw them getting into a taxi, which was then stopped by SA and two other men. The woman and her friend got out, he said.
"I couldn't see beyond that point as the camera range was limited," said OH, 25.
SA said they had consensual sex because after she asked him to drop her off, she started touching him all over his body and tempting him.
The next hearing will be on November 21.
salamir@thenational.ae