Ras Al Khaimah: A man found guilty of human trafficking has had his life sentence cut to 10 years on appeal. A five-year jail term was upheld by the Criminal Appeal Court for his Emirati partner in crime.
A senior court official said the life sentence had been given to the Syrian after he brought three Arab women from Morocco to the UAE to work, after luring them with tempting jobs with good salaries.
The official said the day the women arrived in the UAE, the man and his partner locked them up in a villa where the Syrian raped one of them and forced the others to have sex with a number of his friends.
The official said the Syrian seized the three women's passports and kept them in the villa without any means of contacting the outside world. He added the women's phones were also seized. The suspect forced the women into prostitution and started bringing men to them in the villa. He beat up one of the women when she refused to obey his orders.
After 10 days of being locked in the villa, one of the women managed to scale a wall and reach the main street where passers-by took her to a nearby police station. She told police investigators what had happened.
Villa raided
The official said the police raided the villa, the suspects were arrested and the women released.
They were referred to the Public Prosecution which pressed charges of human trafficking, forcing the women into prostitution, locking them up against their will and rape and referred their case to the Criminal Court, which sentenced the Syrian to life imprisonment and the Emirati to five years' imprisonment.
The two suspects then appealed the ruling. The Criminal Appeal Court reduced the Syrian man's life term but upheld the sentence for the Emirati, who owned the villa where the women had been imprisoned.
