Dubai: A manager, who is serving a seven-year imprisonment for killing his girlfriend in her apartment over a financial dispute, will have a fresh trial before the appellate court.
In September, the Dubai Appeal Court reduced the Lebanese manager’s life sentence to seven years in jail for suffocating his Vietnamese girlfriend, killing her in her apartment over a financial dispute and stealing her money and belongings.
The defendant’s lawyer Obaid Al Mazmi appealed the appellate ruling against before the Cassation Court and argued on Monday that his client had obtained a waiver from the victim’s blood parents.
“My client has obtained from the successors of the deceased written waivers in which they dropped their charges against him. He also was accused of stealing her gold and cash. When we checked the alleged seized items, the gold and the cash that were alleged to have been stolen were never recovered or found among those seized items. We ask the Cassation Court to overturn the appellate judgement and revert the case for a fresh trial before the Appeal Court,” lawyer Al Mazmi argued before presiding judge Abdul Aziz Abdullah.
Meanwhile, prosecutors also appealed the seven-year jail sentence and asked the highest court to stiffen the punishment.
Defending the 31-year-old Lebanese defendant before presiding judge Abdullah in courtroom 22, lawyer Al Mazmi contended: “Dubai police’s forensic examiners said the victim died of a suspected case of suffocation but the results were indecisive. The provided evidence were not corroborated enough to substantiate whether she died of suffocation or any other reason.”
Towards the end of the hearing, presiding judge Abdullah and his five deputy judges overturned the ruling and referred the case back to the Dubai Appeal Court for a new panel of judges to hold a fresh trial.
Records said the Lebanese defendant visited his Vietnamese girlfriend’s apartment to discuss the issue of Dh70,000 that she had borrowed from him before engaging in a heated argument and choking her to death in April 2017.
In March, the Dubai Court of First Instance jailed the Lebanese for life after convicting him of premeditatedly killing the Vietnamese and stealing her belongings.
Citing grounds of leniency, the Dubai Appeal Court overturned the life sentence and reduced it to seven years in jail after the accused had pleaded not guilty and contended that he didn’t intend to murder the victim.
The Lebanese went to the victim’s fifth-floor flat to discuss her unpaid debts and when she ignored him and went to the washroom, he followed her and choked her to death.
The victim’s family in Vietnam lost contact with their daughter for several days before they called up her countrywoman friend.
The friend said she called up common friends who advised her to go to her flat and check before she was found to be dead in her flat.
