Dubai: A British woman was convicted on Tuesday of posting insults on her Facebook profile about her Egyptian ex-colleague.
The Court of Misdemeanours imposed a fine of Dh3,000 on the defendant, E.L., 31.
E.L., a horse trainer and director at Al Reef Stables in Abu Dhabi, appeared before presiding judge Zakariya Abdul Aziz Othman on Tuesday morning and denied calling, M.J., a 34-year-old project manager of a logistics firm, ignorant, stupid and a dictator.
Records show the women were colleagues in the same company.
"She [E.L.] used to work in the same company as an operations manager in the Abu Dhabi branch. She left the company a year and a half ago," M.J. told prosecutors.
According to records, the incident occurred on September 4 last year when E.L. posted an update on her Facebook profile, saying she was happy that the month of Ramadan was finally coming to an end.
"I didn't mean anything by it," she told police officers at Al Rashidiya police station.
When M.J. saw the comment, she told E.L. she needed to respect Islam and Ramadan, and soon the two women were locked in a cyber battle on Facebook.
E.L. denied the charges to prosecutors and police and said she didn't intend to insult Islam or Ramadan.
When a prosecutor asked her why M.J. would claim she had insulted Islam, she replied: "I don't know, maybe she's crazy."
She added: "I did not insult Islam, I did not call her stupid or close-minded, and I did not say she was a dictator. She probably misunderstood what I was telling her."
In response to M.J., E.L. allegedly wrote: "I hope that depriving yourself of food and water would have an effect on your inner spirit and maybe some day you would be more open-minded. You could live in a close-minded country...where freedom isn't allowed."
According to records, M.J. replied that she was proud to be a Muslim. In another comment, E.L. wrote, "If ignorance is bliss, then I am happy. But my Facebook wall is not a place for your dictatorial religious behaviour."
M.J. said shortly after calling her a ‘dictator', E.L. removed her from her friends' list on Facebook.
E.L. then posted a status update that read: "Ah, that's better. Ayatollah has been deleted from my friends list. Anyone else a Bin Laden supporter, please raise your hand."
When asked by prosecutors if she wrote this, E.L. said "yes" and explained that she didn't want someone as strict as Bin Laden on her friends list.
According to M.J. the comments were on E.L.'s wall page, and many of her friends could read and comment on them.
"[M.J.] grew up in a close-minded and stupid environment, unable to learn anything at all," E.L. wrote in a comment on Facebook.
Prosecution records revealed E.L. filed a case against M.J. in Abu Dhabi claiming she had insulted her before by saying she had no religion.
