Dubai: A man has been accused of indulging in sexual intercourse with an underage schoolgirl after she waved him at Mall of the Emirates.
The 32-year-old man, K.M., from Comoros Island, was with his friends when the 13-year-old Emirati girl, who had just been dropped off by another man at the Mall, when she waved him in April.
As soon as K.M. saw the girl waving, according to prosecution records, he walked towards her and they walked around the Mall for 30 minutes.
Then he was said to have taken her to his apartment where he had sex with her more than three times within a day.
Prosecutors charged the defendant of with having sex with the teenager against her will and raping her.
According to the Penal Code, if the victim is under the age of 14 then the case is automatically deemed a rape even if it was consensual.
“I did not rape her and it was not against her will… we had consensual sex,” argued K.M. when he entered a guilty plea before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Thursday.
“Did you have normal sex with her or not? And did you know that she was under 14?” presiding judge Ezzat Abdul Lat asked the defendant.
“We had abnormal sex… but it was consensual. She did not tell me anything about her age,” replied the suspect.
His lawyer Showq Al Kethiri told the court: “The defence wants to hear the statement of the girl and to cross examine Dubai police’s forensic examiner.”
According to the charge sheet, prosecutors said the defendant had sex with the girl against her will.
The Emirati, who is a 9th-grader, testified to prosecutors that in the beginning she got acquainted to an Emirati named A.A. through Twitter.
“We chatted for sometime and then he asked to meet me. I used my young uncle’s phone to communicate with A.A. He picked me up from my grandmother’s house in Al Khawaneej on April 9 at 9pm. We went to his flat in Mirdif… I sat on a couch to watch television while he cleaned the flat. Then he received several calls from my uncle’s number and different numbers as well. He said he was afraid to keep me in his company so I asked him to drop me at Mall of the Emirates. There I saw K.M. in the games section and I waved to him… he came to me immediately.
“I told him I was alone and we walked for 30 minutes then he held my hand. Later we joined his friends at a coffee shop in Jumeirah. At 1am, we left to his flat… on our way he kissed me. We sat together in the bed… I did not agree with him to have sex because I had never had sex with anyone.
"But we had intercourse three times… the next day we went to Ski Dubai and he bought for me clothes. We returned to his place and had sex again. At 1am, police called and informed him that there was a complaint against him… while I waited in his flat, someone called me and pretended to be K.M.’s friend. It turned out to be police, who took me to the station,” the girl was cited claiming to the prosecutors.
A police lieutenant testified to the prosecutors that the girl’s mother complained that her daughter went missing.
“The mother provided us with a number that turned out to be A.A.’s. The latter claimed that he dropped the girl at the Mall shortly after he received an SMS saying ‘return the girl if you wish not to be in jail’. Surveillance cameras at the Mall exposed the girl going into K.M.’s car. The latter was identified from the plate number,” claimed the lieutenant.
Meanwhile, Dubai police’s forensic examiner confirmed that the girl had had intercourse but her virginity remained intact.
The trial continues.
