20200918 Dubai Courts
The Dubai Courts building. Image Credit: Gulf News Archives

Dubai: A Chinese visitor, who has Hepatitis B and Syphilis, has been accused of raping a masseuse.

The Dubai Court of First Instance heard that the 34-year-old Chinese defendant allegedly raped his 22-year-old countrywoman inside a shared Dubai villa in the Al Barsha area of Dubai in September last year.

The woman claimed that the other tenants were having a party and drinking alcohol when the defendant asked her to help him clean his room and give him a massage. “He told me that his roommate was in the room, but I found nobody when I went inside. He locked the door and attacked me,” said the woman on record.

“I screamed for help, but no one could hear me because of the noise at the party. He ripped off my clothes, and raped me.” She added that the defendant threatened to beat her and that he would call his friends to come and threaten her. He allegedly broke her mobile phone when she tried to call the police. She finally managed to escape from the room after the alleged assault and called the police.

The man was arrested and a policeman said that the defendant was under the influence of alcohol. The defendant’s medical tests showed he was suffering from Hepatitis B and Syphilis.

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In court, the defendant denied the charge of rape, issuing threats and damaging a mobile phone and insisted that the victim fabricated the story to blackmail him. “My client didn’t rape the woman, he had consensual sex with her,” Emirati lawyer Awatif Mohammed Khouri, from Al Rowaad Advocates, told the court. “The woman worked as a masseuse and had agreed that night to give my client a massage despite seeing he was drunk.” Khouri insisted that the woman’s aim was to blackmail her client. “He had fallen asleep during the massage and was awaken by his friend only after the police arrived, responding to the woman’s call. She willingly accompanied him to his room despite knowing he was drunk and agreed to have sex with him,” said the lawyer.

The next hearing is scheduled for February 10.