UAE | Crime
Tale of bad names and threats unfolds in court
A businesswoman has denied that she disgraced a merchant, trespassed into his villa and threatened his family after she broke a window following a business scuffle.
- By Bassam Za'za', Senior Reporter
- Published: 23:47 September 3, 2008
Dubai: A businesswoman has denied that she disgraced a merchant, trespassed into his villa and threatened his family after she broke a window following a business scuffle.
The 51-year-old Emirati merchant testified that his problems with the 31-year-old Moroccan woman started with their business relationship.
The Public Prosecution charged the businesswoman, N.F., with threatening the merchant, A.M., and his 44-year-old wife, N.M., by belittling, disparaging them and calling them bad names verbally and through mobile text messages. She was accused of threatening to publish pictures of the family over the internet.
The suspect was also charged with trespassing into the family's villa and breaking one of the glass windows after throwing a vase at it.
"I didn't do anything of the sort. I am not guilty. On the contrary, the claimants defamed me and damaged my car," N.F. told Presiding Judge Fahmi Mounir when she appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance yesterday.
Her lawyer expressed his astonishment as to why the claimants decided to lodge their complaint two years after the incident took place in 2006.
The wife testified: "During November 2006, I was sick when the suspect called me from a public phone to ask when I will die and alleged that I should die soon because I have Aids ... she claimed that my husband was having an affair. Later she sent a text message on my son's cellphone in which she cursed us all." She claimed that the suspect threatened her husband in one of the text messages and cursed her as well.
The merchant said in his statement: "She once trespassed into my house and damaged one of the windows, then she called me and threatened to hurt my children if I didn't come home soon ... I went home quickly and she asked me to follow her to Jumeirah. Then she threatened to post my family's pictures on the internet if I didn't write her a Dh300,000 cheque ... then she asked me to sign another Dh155,000 cheque for her."
The husband alleged that she cursed him and belittled his wife and children.
Meanwhile, the family's Sri Lankan babysitter told the public prosecutor: "I heard her calling my sponsor bad names in Arabic ... She once phoned me and offered to pay me $5,000 if I put a certain unknown substance in the family's food but I refused."
Prosecution witnesses will be heard when the court adjourns later this month.
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