DUBAI // A 33-year-old Emirati man admitted to burning a woman’s handbag containing her passport and some money but denied trespassing into her hotel room, a court heard on Tuesday.
“She let me in, your honour. I didn’t steal her bag and I didn’t trespass but I admit I burned the bag,” said the defendant.
The Emirati and his friend, a 33-year-old who holds a Comoros Islands passport, denied charges of theft, trespassing and damaging property.
The Nigerian woman called police on October 29 last year and reported the two defendants for trespassing into her hotel room, where she was with her sister, and locking both women up in the bathroom.
“They knocked on the door and when I opened they barged in and dragged us into the bathroom. Moments later I dared open the door and saw them leaving with one holding my bag,” the woman told prosecutors.
However, the Emirati defendant said he met the woman online and they agreed to have sex for money. He said she gave him an address at a hotel in Bur Dubai and, when he went there, he knocked on the room door and the woman opened up.
“As I stepped in, three women appeared from nowhere and strangled me then ordered that I hand all the cash I have. I gave them Dh400 and then they forced me to undress and have sex with one of them but I refused, so they let me go,” he said.
The co-accused said that he went to the room after his friend told him what happened, to help him get his money back.
“A naked and drunk woman opened the door for me, so I took her and the other women who were there to the bathroom but I didn’t lock it,” said the second defendant.
Prosecutors said the pair confessed to stealing the bag as they left the room and splitting the Dh1,000 they found inside it before burning it.
A verdict is expected on April 4.
salamir@thenational.ae
