DUBAI // A legal consultant was handed a life sentence on Tuesday after being convicted of raping a woman at knifepoint.
Egyptian A M pulled his 23-year-old Moroccan victim from a lift in the Al Nahda building where she lives and took her to the stairway room, where he raped her, Dubai Criminal Court heard in July.
Records show that at about 4.30am on March 31, the man parked his motorbike when he spotted the salon worker coming out of a cafe and heading for the building. He then followed her into the lift.
The woman told police how she saw the defendant park his motorbike and walk into the building.
“He came towards the lift where I was waiting to head to my flat on the fifth floor then got into the lift with me,” the victim said. “He then asked me where I was from. When I told him I was from Morocco, he pulled out a knife and pointed it at my neck.”
She thought he wanted to rob her, so she handed him her purse and mobile phone, but he refused them and instead ordered her to follow him out of the lift while pointing the knife at her.
“We got to a room in the stairway, where he touched me then forced me to perform an indecent act before he raped me.
“When he finished, a walkie-talkie fell from his pocket, after which he told me he was a CID officer,” said the woman, who called police after the man left.
The Egyptian was arrested four days later and was charged with rape and impersonating a police officer, both of which he denied in court in July.
He claimed that the sex was consensual, but he was sentenced to life in jail, to be followed by deportation.
salamir@thenational.ae
