Sharjah: A woman, her lover, and two friends of the boyfriend are on death row for the murder of the woman's husband seven years ago.

According to a court official, the Emirati woman will become only the first female convict to be executed in the UAE.

The judicial source said that an Iranian woman had been sentenced to death around ten years ago.

"The woman was sentenced to death and her husband too for smuggling heroin to the country. The woman appealed and got 10 years in jail," he said.

The Abu Dhabi Supreme Court later dropped the charges against the Iranian woman and she was deported from the country, the official added.

The Abu Dhabi Supreme Court has twice confirmed the death sentence against the four accused who twice moved the appeal court only for it to confirm the death sentence on both occasions.

The four accused are awaiting a ruling from the higher authority which will authorise a firing squad to carry out the sentence.

The blood parents of the husband refused to pardon the accused and sought Qisas (capital punishment) for them. The accused have all been held at Sharjah Central Jail since 2003 when the victim Fahd, an Emirati policeman in his twenties, was murdered.

The convicted woman, Khawla, was a 17-year-old at the time of the crime. Fahd was also Khawla's cousin.

The Sharia court of first instance found all the accused guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced all of them to death. Sharjah Appeal Court confirmed the death sentence against the four for the murder which was aimed at enabling the woman to marry her lover, the official said yesterday.

The victim had died of multiple stab wounds. According to police, at the time of the incident, the newly-wed Khawla asked her husband to accompany her to the beachside in Sharjah's Al Hira area. The woman had already tipped off her lover, also an Emirati in his early twenties who shares the name Fahd as well, to come to the same place to carry out the crime.

The lover came to the place accompanied by his friends Mukhtar, an Emirati who was 17 at the time, and Abdullah Hussain from Bangladesh, also 17 at the time.

The three men attacked the husband from behind, with Mukhtar and Abdullah holding the hands of the victim and the woman stabbing him several times.

The three accused then ran away leaving the victim bleeding for more than an hour. The woman then contacted police claiming that unidentified robbers had attacked him.

The woman later admitted to the crime after which police arrested the three accomplices the next day.

The victim's mother, who passed away after the murder of her son, asked her children while she was on her death bed not to pardon the killers after her death.