Dubai: Two female convicts who had been serving a life sentence for killing a woman in 1998 have have been released from Dubai Central Jail after their plea to be pardoned was approved.

The two convicts, an Uzbek and a Kazakh, had obtained a waiver from the blood parents of a Russian woman whom they killed in a brothel before dousing her body with benzene and burning it beyond recognition in June 1998.

In April 2000, the Dubai Cassation Court had convicted the two women of premeditated murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

On Sunday, presiding judge Mohammad Jamal of the Dubai Court of First Instance accepted the convicts’ petition for an early release after they provided the court with a written waiver from the blood parents of the murdered Russian.

“After having spent in Dubai Central Jail 18 years and 11 months, the court decided to allow the two petitioners to be released. The court does not deem them as a menace to the society especially after having obtained good conduct and behaviour certificates from the jail’s management … and they would be deported instantly after their release,” the court ruled on Sunday.

According to court records, the plea for pardon by the two women is the fourth they submitted after three previous pardon requests they submitted were rejected by the Court of First Instance in 2013, 2014 and 2016.

What made the fourth petition different from the preceding ones is that the Uzbek and Kazakh convicts obtained a written waiver from the parents of the murdered Russian.

The petitioners’ lawyer told the court earlier that his clients sought an early release after having spent nearly 19 years behind jail bars.

In their fourth plea for early release, the convicts mentioned in their written petitions that they had spent more than 18 years behind bars and that they had come to repent what they had done and sought to reassure that their behaviour had changed completely.

As per Article 45 of Law No 43 of 1992 on Regulating Punitive and Reformative Establishments, the petitioners lodged their pleas before the court seeking an early release after completing more than 18 years of their jail term.

As per the Criminal Procedures Law, the convicts waited for more than a year to pass (since their third petition was rejected in March 2016) before lodging their fourth plea earlier this year.

Court records said the two convicts and a Jordanian man ganged up on the Russian woman while she was sleeping in her bedroom and attacked her with kitchen knives. When they realised she was still breathing, the Jordanian suffocated her with a pillow and they continued stabbing her. The trio then wrapped the corpse in a blanket before they put it in a big plastic bag and kept it on the building’s rooftop. Later, they took the corpse to Ajman and kept it in a deserted villa. They purchased benzene from a nearby petrol station, doused the corpse with the liquid and burnt it beyond recognition before they returned to their flat in Dubai and drank liquor.

The trio also took their victim’s money and belongings.