DUBAI // A gym worker sentenced to three months in jail for threatening to cut a woman’s throat if she did not kiss him has been found not guilty on appeal.
Filipino, E A, 33, denied issuing threats to kill and sexually assault a woman when he appeared at Dubai Criminal Court last November. He also denied the charges at the Court of Appeal earlier this month.
His alleged victim, a 24-year-old Filipina marketing executive, testified that, in the early hours of December 22, 2012, she went into the lift in her building to find E A there.
The lift stopped at her floor and, when the door opened, she said he stuck his head out and started looking around, as if he was searching for someone.
“I told him to step aside because I wanted to get out of the lift, but he suddenly took out a blade and placed it on my neck,” said the woman. She recalled him asking her not to scream or he would kill her.
“He told me he wanted to kiss me on my lips and asked me to kiss him back,” she said in her testimony.
The woman claimed that she pushed him away, got out of the lift and saw him pressing the ground floor button and fleeing.
She went to the security guard’s room and informed him of the incident. He followed her outside to search for the defendant and they spotted a police car and reported the incident.
Police could not find the defendant and the case was closed. But in April last year she said that the gym where she worked hired a new employee and when she saw him, she recognised him as her attacker.
“He also recognised me and started asking about where I lived, so I got scared and told my friend, who advised me to inform the management, and when I did so, they called police,” she said, adding that police went to the gym and arrested him there.
J T, a marketing manager at the gym, testified that the defendant worked at their branch in Festival City but was transferred to the Uptown Mirdif branch, where the victim recognised him.
“She came to me the next day he started work and she was crying and in a state of fear and told me the incident,” said J T.
However, the court ruled that the Filipino man was not guilty and he was released.
salamir@thenational.ae
