Dubai: An employee is challenging a three-month jail term he was given for having consensual sex with a woman who was caught walking naked in public.

The 28-year-old Chinese woman was reported having been seen walking naked in the streets of Dubai before she told policemen that she had been involved in a sexual affair with the 25-year-old Emirati employee, who was also found with her at the time of arrest in December 2016.

The woman told the arresting police officers that she had allowed the employee to have sex with her after he had promised to help release her passport that had been confiscated earlier when she was stopped for lifting up a signboard in which she criticised the Chinese government inside a mall.

After being taken to a police station, the woman told investigators that she had sex several times with the Emirati. The man was said to have confirmed to police the woman's story.

Prosecutors accused the couple of having consensual sex.

In June, the Dubai Misdemeanours Court sentenced the couple to three months in jail.

The Chinese defendant was also handed a deportation order.

However, the Appeal Court later accepted the woman’s appeal and reduced her three-month imprisonment to one month, citing leniency grounds, and upheld her deportation

Meanwhile, the Emirati lodged a separate appeal, pleaded not guilty and sought to have his punishment overturned.

The defendant’s lawyer Yousuf Al Beloushi, of Bin Suwaidan Advocates and Legal Consultants, argued before the appellate court that his client was convicted and handed an imprisonment on what he described as "fabricated allegations and unfounded evidence".

“My client’s confession that he had consensual sex with the woman was extracted under coercion and bogus promises," the lawyer argued.

"Law-enforcement officers talked my client in to confessing that he had sex with the Chinese defendant after they had promised not to take legal action against him and that the case would be dropped.

"Out of the fear of losing his job, my client willingly signed papers that he didn’t even read. Besides, forensic examination reports confirmed that the woman was not found to have been involved in a sexual encounter at the time of her arrest.

"The whole case and accusations were based on the woman’s malicious claims and prosecutors’ uncorroborated evidence,” argued lawyer Al Beloushi.

Prosecution witnesses gave contradicting and inconsistent statements, the lawyer told the appellate court.

“The Chinese woman claimed that the last time she allegedly had sex with my client was two days prior to her arrest ... yet the forensic examination report came to prove her to have lied since the findings confirmed that she was found not to have been indulged in a recent sexual encounter," said the lawyer. 

"According to the forensic report, examiners couldn’t find any traces of DNA or semen when she was examined physically. She also contradicted herself during questioning when she once claimed to prosecutors that she had sex 10 times with my client and prior to that she told police interrogators that they had sex four times.

"Furthermore, it was a Moroccan woman who complained to the police that she saw the Chinese defendant nude in the street. She also bit my client’s hand when she saw him walking with his wife in the street and fabricated the sex claims against him,” contended lawyer Al Beloushi, who asked the appellate court to acquit his client.

A ruling will be heard soon.