Jail term upheld by Dubai appeals court for woman who tortured maid to death

DUBAI // A woman who subjected her two maids to torture so horrific that one of them died had her prison sentence upheld by the appeals court on Sunday.

Emirati R M, 45, was found guilty of the torture charges at the Criminal Court in January and jailed for 15 years, with an additional month for depriving the maids of medical care.

Her husband A F, also Emirati, was jailed for three years for aiding and abetting his wife. His sentence was also upheld by the Dubai Court of Appeal.

His wife had kept the two maids, an Ethiopian and a Filipina, imprisoned in a room with sealed windows at her villa in Al Rashidiya for more than a month.

She refused to feed them, causing the Ethiopian, Khadija Kamel, to develop pneumonia, from which she died.

The Filipina, E K, 29, testified that R M had stripped them naked, beat them with sticks and banged their heads against the wall until they bled.

She said Kamel was sometimes so hungry that she had to root through rubbish bins for food.

E K also said she had been forced to drink cleaning products.

“She made me drink Clorox and Dettol because she did not like how I cleaned the bathroom,” she said.

R M often threatened the maids with jail because her husband worked in courts.

They were never allowed to talk to their families, and “we were often not allowed to talk to each other”, E K said.

She also told how she had been taken to a bathroom with her colleague, where R M stripped them of their clothes, took naked pictures of them, then threatened them with the images.

Records revealed that Kamel eventually fell ill, and when R M denied her medication it caused her to develop pneumonia. Her death was hastened when she also forced her to drink pesticide.

“Four days before her death, Khadija was extremely sick and wasn’t able to walk or even go to bathroom,” said E K. “I begged R M to take her to hospital but she refused. When Kadija died, R M offered me huge amounts of money to keep my mouth shut.”

The husband had helped his wife to prepare the room where the maids were imprisoned by sealing the windows. The couple denied all charges when they appeared at the Dubai Criminal Court.

R M said she knew absolutely nothing about their injuries. “I swear to God I didn’t touch them,” she said.

Despite the Appeal Court’s ruling, the couple’s lawyer, Saeed Al Ghilani, said he would continue to seek acquittal of his clients. He said he was awaiting a copy of the full verdict to see what evidence the court had based its verdict on.

“I will then appeal at the Court of Cassation,” said the lawyer.

His defence case rested on the fact that the maid’s death was caused by drinking pesticide.

“It was not proven that my client, the wife, forced the maid to drink pesticide,” he said.

He also said the husband had only sealed the windows for safety reasons, to prevent their children falling out.

He said: “How many cases of children falling to their death have we heard of?” he asked.