DUBAI // A 39-year-old Emirati denied raping a woman after beating her up then throwing her out of his flat naked.
Dubai Criminal Court heard on Thursday that the defendant convinced the woman he could help her with a residency court case against her and lured her into his flat in Al Qusais on January 21.
“She is a family acquaintance and often visits me but I didn’t do anything to her nor did I kick her out of the flat naked,” said the accused, who is facing charges of rape and sexual assault by stripping a woman naked and throwing her outside in public.
The Uzbek woman told prosecutors that she met the defendant through her sister about six months before the incident happened and that he had bailed her out when she was arrested in the residency case.
“I visited him at his flat four or five times in relation to my case and he was often alone at the flat, but sometimes his children would be with him, and I never sat for more than a couple of hours, I never slept over,” she said.
On the day of the incident, she said he called her and asked her to come because he had information about her case. She went over at noon and found his children there.
“We spoke for a while, then he had an argument with his children and became furious and deflected it on to me and started yelling, so I tried to leave,” she said.
The woman, whose age was not given, said he snatched her phone away then tore her shirt and skirt up in front of his children before beating her and dragging her by the hair to the bedroom.
“He even ordered his son to lock the bedroom door,” she said.
The accused allegedly raped her for nearly two hours, during which time she sustained injuries from resisting.
“I was bleeding from the head and knee. When he was done, he dragged me again by the hair and threw me out of the apartment,” the woman said.
She knocked on the door of a nearby flat and a woman gave her clothes to cover herself, the Uzbek said. She then left the building and found her phone and purse on the ground at the entrance. She picked them up and went to the police station to report the Emirati.
The defendant was arrested the next day and told police that he was in a relationship with the woman and they occasionally had sex in his apartment.
“He told me that on the day of the incident she came to visit him and she willingly got undressed and sat on the bed, and he just sat there and they spoke,” said a police lieutenant.
“He said he didn’t have sex with her that day at all but when they argued he got angry and kicked her out.”
The officer said that a recording from the building’s surveillance camera showed the woman going into the flat, then later coming to the door with the defendant before going back inside.
“Then the clip shows her coming out of the flat but there was someone pushing her from behind the door – his face wasn’t showing,” said the lieutenant.
The next hearing will be on June 29.
salamir@thenational.ae
