Dubai: A visitor has been accused of beating and torturing a civil engineer after getting into his apartment. The suspected motive is revenge for missing a Dh368 million-worth investment opportunity.

The 50-year-old Irish visitor, LU, and three Afghan suspects were said to have locked up the Afghan engineer inside his home where they beat and tortured him before stealing his money in May.

Prosecutors accused LU and the Afghans [who remain at large] — AQ, MA and GH — of beating and assaulting the engineer and torturing him with a taser gun. They are also accused of wrapping tape around his arms and legs, blindfolding and muzzling him, and then torturing him. They apparently also locked him up inside a walk-in closet.

The Afghan runaways are being tried in absentia before the Dubai Court of First Instance.

“I am not guilty,” said LU when he entered his plea in courtroom seven on Sunday.

“What are your demands from the court?” presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi asked the suspect.

“We are negotiating a settlement and a waiver with the claimant,” he replied.

According to the accusation sheet, prosecutors charged the four suspects with illegal confinement, theft and trespassing into the engineer’s flat.

A police officer testified to prosecutors that LU was arrested at the airport before he could leave the country.

“The Afghan engineer reported us that he had been allegedly beaten, tortured, roped and locked up in a closet … he claimed that shortly after he freed himself from the closet, he bumped into LU in his flat. The Irish suspect was detained at the airport … during questioning, the latter claimed that he and the runaways assaulted and confined the engineer in an act of revenge. The Irish suspect claimed during questioning that he decided to teach the engineer a lesson because he made him miss a $100 million-worth (Dh368 million) of investment opportunity in a project in Bahrain,” the officer claimed.

The Afghan testified to prosecutors that he was in his washroom when he spotted the defendants in his flat, where they assaulted, tortured and beat him before taking Dh11,300 from him.

The trial continues.