Dubai: A sports coach has been acquitted of threatening to kill his ex-wife by banging her head if she did not withdraw her police complaint against him.

When he appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance, the American coach had denied threatening his Egyptian ex-wife that he would go to the gym where she works, pull her from her hair and beat her to death if she did not drop her case against him in August.

Citing lack of corroborated evidence, presiding judge Ehab Ahmad cleared the American of any wrongdoing.

According to Tuesday’s judgement, the court also dismissed the Egyptian claimant’s civil lawsuit that she had lodged against her former husband. The woman alleged that she came to know about the death threats from her countrywoman friend, a lawyer, who told her over the phone that the coach had conveyed the verbal threats through her [the lawyer].

On hearing this, the woman lodged a complaint against her ex-husband at a police station.

The prosecutors accused the suspect of verbally threatening to kill his ex-wife but he pleaded not guilty in court.

The ex-wife told prosecutors that her friend told her over the phone about the death threats.

“She told me that he [suspect] had called her and threatened that he would beat me and kill me. She told me that he said over the phone that ‘I would go to the gym where she [ex-wife] works to assault and kill her’. He made those threats because he wanted me back as his wife, but I had refused,” she claimed.

Her lawyer friend told prosecutors that her friend and the coach had constant fights before they got divorced.

“Since she wanted to put an end to the suspect’s constant pestering and offensive behaviour, she came to me for a legal advice because I am a lawyer. I called up the man and introduced myself as the claimant’s friend on which he shouted over the phone. He claimed that he had not divorced her yet and that he was angry because she [ex-wife] had lodged a defamation case against him at a police station. In later calls and messages, he threatened to kill her on which I told my friend about it,” she told prosecutors.

The coach strongly rejected what he described by his ex-wife’s unfounded and baseless claims and accused her of lodging the complaint out of malice.

Tuesday’s ruling remains subject to appeal within 15 days.