Dubai // A woman was sexually assaulted when a man dived underwater and grabbed her as she swam off Jumeirah public beach, a court was told yesterday.
A Filipina witness, AM, told prosecutors that she heard her 27-year-old friend screaming as she was attacked by AA, an Egyptian, also 27.
The incident happened on July 19. "We were at the beach that afternoon swimming," said AM, 20. "I heard my friend screaming and we saw a man swim to the shore and walk away.
"My friends tried to scream to him but he just walked away."
The alleged victim told prosecutors that when she arrived at the beach in Umm Suqeim that morning, a group of men approached her but she kept away from them. She entered the water with her friends to swim and was attacked, she said.
The woman said after she screamed the man swam back to shore and walked away, ignoring calls from her friends on the beach to stop. "He and his friends walked away and tried to hide from us," she said.
Police found AA loitering at the beach and arrested him, according to records at the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance.
AA denies sexual assault. Presiding Judge El Saeed Bargouth adjourned the case until October 13 to deliver his verdict.
amustafa@thenational.ae
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Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
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Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
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Date started: March 2023
Founder: Jacqueline Perrottet
Based: Dubai
Number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Investment required: $500,000
Specs: 2024 McLaren Artura Spider
Engine: 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 and electric motor
Max power: 700hp at 7,500rpm
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