Dubai: Two visitors lost their appeals and had their three-year imprisonment doubled for providing sexual services at a massage centre and beating to death a man, who pestered their masseuses.
The Vietnamese visitors, aged 32 and 33, had been distributing cards advertising sex and massage services at a flat in International City where they ran a brothel, in July 2016.
The visitors beat up a Pakistani man, who annoyed a masseuse at the flat. After the incident, the Pakistani man returned with his three countrymen to take revenge on the Vietnamese men.
The Pakistani friends assaulted the Vietnamese duo, who snatched a knife from one of the Pakistanis and stabbed the man who had harassed the masseuses. The man died later.
In March, the Dubai Court of First Instance jailed the Vietnamese defendants for three years each over fatal assault.
The primary court jailed the Pakistani defendants for two months each and fined them Dh2,000 over assault.
The Vietnamese appealed their primary ruling and sought to have their imprisonment reduced before the Appeal Court.
Prosecutors also appealed the primary ruling and sought to have it stiffened against all defendants [Vietnamese and Pakistanis].
Presiding judge Eisa Al Sharif accepted prosecutors’ appeal and rejected that of the Vietnamese defendants and increased their imprisonment period from three years to six. Meanwhile, the Pakistani defendants were referred to the Dubai Misdemeanours Court because of jurisdictional reasons.
According to the appeal judgement, the Vietnamese will be deported after serving their jail terms.
When they appeared in court, the Vietnamese duo denied the charges of fatal assault and promoting immoral practices. They contended that they had only assaulted the victim.
Records said the Vietnamese defendants and their countryman, who remains at large, stabbed the victim and killed him and assaulted the Pakistani defendants.
The primary court ruled that the duo did not murder the victim and altered the murder accusation to assault, which resulted in death.
A police lieutenant said they were informed that a man had been stabbed to death and was found in front of a building’s entrance.
“We found the victim lying in a pool of blood. We also spotted a knife in front of the emergency exit. The Pakistani defendants told us that the Vietnamese stabbed their friend and killed him due to a previous dispute. Surveillance camera footage showed the Vietnamese assaulting the victim. Interrogations revealed that the victim had visited the flat for a massage and he quarrelled with the Vietnamese men, who beat him up. Then he contacted his countrymen defendants to take revenge. Thereafter, a group fight took place and the Vietnamese defendants stabbed and killed him. The flat was being run as a brothel,” the lieutenant said.
The appellate ruling remains subject to appeal before the Cassation Court within 27 days.
