ABU DHABI // A man testified in court yesterday that he stabbed his wife to death after she told him she had sex with other men. IH, from Sudan, appeared before the Abu Dhabi Criminal Court of First Instance charged with killing his wife in their living room with a kitchen knife. He pleaded not guilty, saying he could only remember trying to take the knife from her hands.
"After that I do not know what happened. Probably I killed her," he told the first hearing. "I just became unconscious. We had a lot of issues and when I saw the knife in her hands, I just lost my mind." He said his wife spent most of her time with a woman and what he called an "effeminate" relative. "Her friend, the woman, was living alone and no man was in charge of her," he told the court. He said he found "romantic" messages on his wife's phone sent to and from a female friend.
One day before the incident, he said his wife spent the day outside the house and slept at her friends' flat in Sharjah. He went to Sharjah the next day but he said his wife told him she had gone to Ajman, the court heard. IH said he waited for her but she told him she was taking a bus to Mussafah in Abu Dhabi, where they lived with their children. He said he returned to the house. He claimed she provoked him by telling him she spent all her time with her friends because she had sex with several men. He told the court he threatened to report her to police and she ran at him with a knife.
"I caught the knife in my hand and I do not know what happened after that," he said. The judge adjourned the case until August 23. @Email:hhassan@thenational.ae