Dubai: A woman who infiltrated the country to stay with her children and evade imprisonment in Iran will be deported after having been found guilty of flouting UAE residency laws.

The Dubai Appeal Court fined the 44-year-old woman Dh1,000 and ordered her deportation after she was convicted of illegally entering the UAE and staying here without a proper residency or visa.

Born in the UAE in 1970, the woman lived in the country as a person without identification documents until she obtained a passport from the Comoros Islands based on the directives of the Interior Ministry.

The mother of two was visiting Iran in December 2012 when the Iranian police took her into custody over a wrongdoing. She placed her Comoros Islands passport in police custody and walked out on bail pending further investigations.

“Where will she be deported to? She does not hold any passport currently. When her case was referred to the Iranian capital, the woman decided to return to the UAE at any cost to stay with her children and sick sister and to avoid ending up in an Iranian prison. She found a way to enter the UAE before she got arrested for staying illegally in the country and without a proper residency,” her lawyer argued before the Dubai Appeal Court.

Dubai prosecutors accused the woman of flouting UAE residency laws and referred her to the Dubai Residency Misdemeanours Court.

She was fined Dh1,000 and ordered to be deported.

Her lawyer told Gulf News that the defendant hired him after the primary judgement was pronounced.

In his defence argument before the Appeal Court, the lawyer asked the appellate judges to grant his client leniency.

“My client did not have any criminal intention. Her Comoros Islands passport is valid until 2016 and she also has a UAE residency valid until January 2015. When the Iranian police confiscated her passport, my client had no other choice but to return to the UAE to stay with her children, who are in school. She was summoned several times to the investigation by Qeshm police until her case was referred to Tehran. Worried about her life and her children, she came to Dubai. She was arrested when she on her own and based on good intentions, visited the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs to settle her stay. My client thought that she would not be breaching the law considering that she has a valid residency,” the lawyer contended before the appellate judges.

The defendant’s father was born in the UAE, married here and his children were also born here, according to the lawyer.

Seeking to cancel her deportation order, the lawyer provided the Appeal Court with a copy of the defendant’s passport and residency. He also provided the court with a document confirming that Qeshm Police had confiscated her passport.

The Appeal Court upheld the primary ruling.

The ruling has become final since the defendant did not lodge an appeal before the Cassation Court within the 30-day period to do so.