ABU DHABI // A woman who crashed her car into a vehicle full of undercover police officers thought she was rescuing her friend from a group of men, a court has been told.
Prosecutors said L, an Emirati, reversed into the police car, endangered the officers and intentionally caused a traffic accident. She denied the charges in court.
Her lawyer, Tarek Al Serkal, on Monday said that she was at home when her friend and fellow defendant R M called to be rescued.
R M, who was not in court, was stopped by undercover CID agents at a remote area in Sharjah during the night.
They had received a reports of a young woman who had run away and thought it might be her.
“She was driving L’s car, so she gave them L’s name,” Mr Al Serkal said.
She called L and told her she was surrounded by men and was scared that they would attack her. She asked her friend to rush to her rescue.
“L is a married woman and has children,” Mr Al Serkal said. “She went quickly to rescue her friend.”
The lawyer said that on her way she called police operations to report the incident.
When she arrived she found the car and officers, but did not know they were police.
“They only had the top light on, and even I [could] go to Dubai and buy one for my car,” Mr Al Serkal said. He said they did not show their identification.
“This is an era where harassment [has become] widespread,” Mr Al Serkal said.
“They were two women at midnight in a remote area.
“She was in a state of terror and emergency to rescue her friend, so when she reversed she was too nervous and accidentally crashed into their car.”
She said she did not mean to crash into the car, endanger policemen’s lives or cause the crash.
Mr Al Serkal requested that the court seek the police call register records to check that she had called them twice.
The first call was to report what her friend had told her when she was on her way to the rescue, and the second when she went back to the scene to pick up the car R M was driving.
The case was adjourned.
hdajani@thenational.ae
