Dubai: An aviation engineer failed to be acquitted for indecently gesturing in public at two plainclothes policemen.
The Dubai Court of Appeal upheld a six-month suspended jail term against the 59-year-old French engineer, D.M., and convicted him of flashing his middle finger in the faces of two Emirati policemen while driving on Business Bay Bridge.
When D.M. appeared before the appellate court, he pleaded innocent. The accused sought to be acquitted. The court rejected his appeal and confirmed the primary judgement. The defendant also faces a deportation order.
His lawyer contended that his client did not have any criminal intention. "In the West, it's an Anglo-Saxon habit that someone flashes his middle finger unlike in our culture…where it is an act punishable by law. The two cultures differ," his lawyer argued before the appeal court.
The appellate judgement remains subject to appeal before the Cassation Court within 27 days.
