ABU DHABI // A mother convicted of sex outside wedlock and negligence after her three-year-old child fell to his death from a 13th-floor window presented a blood test to the appeal court yesterday to prove she was in the process of getting married. DS, an Emirati woman, was sentenced in April by the Abu Dhabi Criminal Court of First Instance to two years in prison for having sex outside of wedlock and to two months for negligence that led to the boy's death. The mother was acquitted of "justification of sin", a common charge when there is an allegation of a moral crime.
DS appeared before Abu Dhabi Appellate Court demanding that the lower court's verdict be reduced after she presented a blood test she took along with the man she had sex with, which is required by law before marriage. The son, identified as AT, died after falling from an apartment in Khalidiya about 1 am on January 20. The mother, who worked for the UAE Armed Forces, had left him with her Indonesian maid, N T.
The maid was sentenced to one month in prison, followed by deportation, for negligence that led to the death of the child. The maid was deported last month, according to a court official. Relatives, who were at the house after the accident, told The National the mother went to a pharmacy to buy medicine for her ill son. But prosecutors said she was meeting her lover, an Emirati man identified as T A. The criminal court also found the man guilty of having sex outside of wedlock and sentenced him to two years.
Col Maktoum Ali al Sherifi, the director of the Capital Police, said in January that a bedroom window was only slightly open, but that there was enough room for a small child to fit through. The mother arrived home after midnight and found her son lying on the ground outside. Prosecutors submitted their case to the Criminal Court in February with a signed confession from the mother pleading guilty to all the charges, but during the first hearing she told the judge she had been beaten into signing it. Her ex-husband brought the case against her, telling prosecutors his ex-wife was in an illicit relationship with another man and that her negligence led to the death of the son.
D S has been in the Wathba Prison since February. hhassan@thenational.ae