DUBAI // Two of three men convicted of kidnapping, robbing and raping a woman before selling her to a prostitution ring will have to serve life in jail after their sentences were upheld.
Two Bangladeshi defendants, aged 30 and 33, were arrested while arriving back in the UAE at Sharjah Airport and, on March 16, they were convicted at Dubai Criminal Court of rape, kidnap, robbery, issuing threats and human trafficking, convictions that were upheld by Dubai Court of Appeal.
The third suspect remains at large and was sentenced in his absence.
The woman was raped after she accepted a ride home from a man she did not know on December 21, 2014.
The 32-year-old Filipina was waiting for a taxi in Al Quoz when a car stopped and offered her a lift to her home in Motor City for money.
She got into the back seat and, shortly after, the driver stopped at a petrol station and picked up two other men.
The woman was then molested by one of the men. “I tried to move away but I was in the middle, between the two,” said the victim, adding that one of the men stripped her naked.
She offered them her money and valuables to let her go but her pleas were ignored. All three then took turns raping her in the back of the car.
The victim said that after the rapes, she tried to escape from the car but was stopped by one of the men who grabbed her leg. “After my escape attempt, they tied both my hands and beat me up,” she said.
The men then stole her phone and money before they stopped at a shopping centre where a woman got into the car with them.
“She told me that I will have to come with her to work as a prostitute. When I refused she said it’s my only option as the other was to leave me with the three men,” she said.
They then drove to a villa. “I found another victim, also Filipina, locked up there,” she said.
The villa’s front door was locked and guarded by two men. One of them, the victim said, had sex with her and she was too scared to refuse.
“After the sex, he slept so I climbed to a small opening in the kitchen wall and crawled out of the very small hole with much difficulty then hid under a truck the entire night,” said the woman. In the morning she stopped a passer-by and asked for help. The man called police.
Police managed to track down the men from the car after checking CCTV cameras at the petrol station.
“They confessed to raping the woman and said they sold her for Dh3,000 and also asked the buyer to pay them Dh100 for petrol,” testified an Emirati policeman, 40.
Forensics confirmed the woman had been subjected to a forceful sex act.
Records did not mention the woman who had bought her or whether she had been arrested.
The men will be deported after serving their jail terms.
salamir@thenational.ae
