Dubai: A lawyer has accused a woman of deception and blackmail as she argued in court on Tuesday that her client didn’t rape a woman but they had consensual sex.
Prosecutors accused the 37-year-old Emirati man, I.H., of luring the Spanish woman to his flat that he claimed to be a gym where he allegedly raped her. The suspect denied having unwanted sex or any form of forced sex with the woman and pleaded not guilty before the Dubai Court of First Instance. “The woman is a charlatan. She blackmailed my client and tried to extract money [Dh15,000] from him when she malevolently and unfoundedly claimed to the police and the prosecutors that she was raped. I ask the court to drop the factor of compulsion or duress … if anything happened, it was consensual,” I.H.’s lawyer Shouq Al Katheri contended before presiding judge Mohammad Jamal.
The Spanish woman failed to show up in court and testify.
However, she earlier told prosecutors that the suspect pretended to be taking her to a gym that turned out to be a flat where she alleged that he forced himself on her in Dubai Academic City.
“He had claimed to me that he is a fitness instructor. I met him near a school on Shaikh Zayed Road and went with him in his car to Academic City. I jogged there for eight minutes and he drove beside me. When I asked him to take me to Safa or Jumeirah to work out there, he claimed that he had to return to his gym because his students were expecting him. We went up to a building and he opened the door with a key … then he asked me to enter what he claimed to be the gym. It turned out to be residential studio. He refused my request to take me back home … he insisted on training me. He forced himself on me and raped me after he deceitfully convinced me to remove my clothes,” claimed the woman.
Countering what she described as the woman’s ‘false allegations’, lawyer Shouq contended: “Her statement was full of contradictory details. To be more precise, her statement was illogical. How can one believe that a flat in a residential building’s third floor is a gym? Why did she agree to enter the flat? Why didn’t she call the police or SMS her location to 999! Your honour, her statement was full of fabrications. Had she been coerced and forced to accompany my client, why didn’t she call the police instead of calling a friend?”
In her defence argument in court, the lawyer asked presiding judge Jamal to acquit I.H. or modify the rape charge to consensual sex.
A ruling will be heard on October 25.