Man sentenced for death of Chinese prostitute in 2003

Seven years after he murdered a Chinese prostitute in Dubai, a Syrian man has been sentenced to 15 years in jail.

DUBAI // Seven years after he murdered a Chinese prostitute in Dubai, a man has been sentenced to 15 years in jail. His downfall came last year when he was stopped by police for street racing in Sharjah and his fingerprints showed up in a police database. AM, 27, from Syria, killed Zhu Li in March 2003 after they argued over money he said she stole from him, according to court documents.

But it would take years before he was linked to the crime. "He was racing in a street and was called in, his fingerprints were put into the system and then it flagged up," said a CID officer who declined to reveal his name. "When the murder happened in 2003 we discovered over 1,000 different prints in the scene due to the victim's profession. We had to call in most of the prostitute's clients who matched our database then."

Omar al Mutawa, a police captain, said officers tracked down AM's mobile phone number and asked him to report to a police station, telling him there was a sexual harassment complaint against him. Prosecutors said the muder happened after AM visited a brothel in the Naif district with a Bangladeshi friend and paid Dh250 to have sex with the woman. He said in his statement that he dozed off for an hour after they had sex. When he awoke, he said, Dh1,800 of his money was missing.

They had a heated argument over the money and he slapped her. He claimed she hit him back, which infuriated him, so he hit her with a telephone charger and cracked her head. He said he fled the apartment, leaving Li in a pool of blood. [e-mail]