Dubai: An accountant has been sentenced to 13 months in jail for getting drunk and threatening to slit a man’s throat if he did not pay him more than Dh5,000.
The 31-year-old accountant, A.K., from the Comoros Islands, entered a hotel reception last November and pointed the knife in the Emirati man’s face then threatened to kill him if he did not pay him money.
The Dubai Court of First Instance sentenced A.K. to one year in jail for threatening to kill the victim a further one month for getting drunk.
The defendant was convicted of verbally threatening the victim and threatening to kill a Syrian nightclub manager while drunk.
When the accused appeared in court, he confessed to getting drunk but denied the verbal threat.
Presiding judge Ezzat Abdul Lat said the accused will be deported following the completion of his jail term.
The Emirati victim said he was inside the hotel’s nightclub when the incident took place.
“The defendant stood in my face. He asked me if my name was A.M. and if I came from Sharjah. When I said yes, he claimed that someone had hired him to kill me. Then he took out a knife from his pocket and asked me to walk outside the nightclub with him. He said if I paid him more than Dh5,000 [the amount that he claimed to have been paid to kill me] he wouldn’t kill me. He said he did not care about killing me because he has a rich criminal record. I ran away and asked one of the hotel’s security guards to help me,” he said.
The nightclub’s Syrian manager told prosecutors he asked the defendant to stop making trouble in the club.
“When the Emirati left the club because of the defendant, I faced the latter again. I asked the bouncers to kick him out of the place if he continued to trouble club-goers,” said the manager.
Records said the manager and the guards restrained A.K. and took the knife away from him before the police came.
Thursday’s ruling remains subject to appeal within 15 days.
