(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Two engineers were sentenced to life imprisonment on Tuesday by the Court of First Instance for sexually assaulting an 18-year-old girl in the desert after luring her to ride with them and kidnapping her.
According to prosecution records, the Emirati defendants aged 25 and 26, identified as A.I. and A.S., kidnapped the teenage student, after one of them met her to show her a car as per a prior agreement. However, once in the car, the girl from Comoros Island was denied her freedom and forcefully taken to a desert area near Al Aweer. There they sexually assaulted her and A.I. filmed the assault with his mobile phone camera.
They faced kidnap and sexual assault charges. The verdict is subject to appeal within 15 days at the Court of Appeal.
The student said that she had met A.I. in a chat room over the Internet about nine months before the incident which happened in March.
On the day of the incident, A.I. had asked the girl to see him, offering to lend her his car for personal use. He picked her up at 7pm from Al Buhaira in Sharjah and drove to Al Aweer. There he told her to ride with his friend A.S. in his tinted SUV so that she would not be noticed. He said he would bring 'her car' from his place.
She rode with A.S. until his car's tyres got stuck in the desert dunes. A.S. called A.I. who arrived in the same car and the girl then rode with him. She was crying to go back home but he drove further into the desert. He then forced himself on her after snatching her mobile phone. A.S. also forced himself on her and A.I. filmed it. They ignored her as she cried, begging them to stop.
On the way back, she seized the chance to step out of the car when he stopped at a tyre shop. She sought the help of men outside the shop to call the police.
During the interrogation, she said that she could not fight the men who were physically stronger. She could not run away from A.S. first because it was dark and she was scared and said that A.I. had threatened her that he would not take her out of the desert until she did as he asked.
A police captain said during the investigation that he had just finished having dinner with his friends at a restaurant in Al Aweer residential area when he spotted the complainant crying and saying that she was kidnapped and raped. He immediately informed the police Operation Room.
According to the report of the General Department of Criminal Evidence, the DNA of the semen sample taken from the student matched with that of the defendants.
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