DUBAI // A former prisoner who fell out with another inmate waited until they were both released before attacking him with a meat cleaver at a petrol station.
At the Criminal Court on Sunday, Emirati M A, 34, was sentenced to six months’ jail for the assault on M A A in 2010.
The pair met in Al Qusais detention centre in 2006, where they were serving time over an assault case.
“We weren’t on good terms at that time, and in 2010 we met in detention again and had a fight there,” said the victim, 29, also an Emirati.
Five months after he was released, he was walking out of the petrol station supermarket in Al Muhaisnah when M A struck him five times with the cleaver to his head, right arm, stomach and other parts of his body.
“I held the cleaver from its sharp end and injured myself while trying to defend myself,” the victim said.
He collapsed and woke up at the hospital, where he needed several operations to save his life.
Despite the surgery, he suffered a permanent disability of 15 per cent.
The attacker earlier denied the assault charge, telling the judge it happened so long ago he could not remember the incident.
“You have been sleeping for four years and now you just remembered to ask me about something so old,” he said in a hearing last month.
“I don’t even remember what I ate last night for dinner and I don’t know the man you say I assaulted.”
newsdesk@thenational.ae
