DUBAI // A Quran teacher has been sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of repeatedly raping an 11-year-old male student.
The Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance yesterday handed down the guilty verdict that ended the eight-month trial. The presiding judge Hamad Abdel Latif found that the 33-year-old Pakistani Z B raped the victim over a period of seven months and also convicted him of presenting pornographic materials to a minor. Z B has two weeks to appeal the verdict.
The boy told prosecutors that Z B had been teaching him at his house five days a week since February of last year. He was not able to tell anyone about the attacks because he was in constant fear of the defendant. His mother testified that his demeanour had changed and that he seemed to be distressed during the period.
"I recognised fear and angst in my son and kept on asking him what was wrong," she told prosecutors. "After many questions he confronted me with what the man asked him to do that day and with what he was doing to him over the past seven months."
The mother told prosecutors that she had been trying to hire a teacher for her son to learn the Quran. She claimed that she agreed to hire Z B to provide five 30-minute classes per week after learning that he was instructing other children in her neighbourhood.
The victim's mother filed a police complaint on January 11. Z B was taken in for questioning the next day at the Jebel Ali Police station and has been in custody since. Prosecution records show that the defendant was not found to have any priors in his records. Police and prosecution records did not show if the families of his other students had been contacted or informed of the case.
amustafa@thenational.ae