DUBAI // A prominent British surgeon charged with raising his middle finger at a police sergeant did not appear at his first court hearing this morning.
Abdul Rahman Al Mudarrib, the lawyer for Joseph William Nunoo Mensah, 41, asked the Dubai Court of Misdemeanours for a long continuance. He said Dr Mensah had left the country on urgent business but would be back for the next hearing. It was not clear today how his passport was returned, enabling him to leave the country.
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Prosecutors charged Dr Mensah, a consultant colorectal surgeon at King's College Hospital, London, with committing a public indecent act. He denied the charges during prosecution and police investigations.
"I didn't flag my middle finger at him," he said in records.
According to records, about 7pm on April 25, Dr Mensah was driving his black Mitsubishi Pajero on the Jebel Ali-Lihbab Road with his wife and son. A white Toyota Corolla pulled up close behind him and flashed its lights.
"I thought he wanted me to give way, but I couldn't, as there was only one lane," he said.
He said the road was narrowed because several lanes were closed by construction.
When the road opened up, as Dr Mensah was driving at 60kph, the driver of the Corrolla pulled up next to him and rolled down his window. Dr Mensah told prosecutors he responded by raising both hands in a gesture of confusion, as he did not know what the other driver wanted from him.
SS, 28, a first sergeant at the General Department of the Naturalisation and Residency, testified that he was with his child in the car when he noticed that Dr Mensah was driving at night without his lights
"I flashed at him twice to alert him," he said. "When I opened the window, I was surprised to see him raising his middle finger at me."
Dr Mensah did not look towards SS nor open his window, SS testified. He said he pulled behind Dr Mensah's car, wrote down its plate number and called police.
Police called Dr Mensah to Lihbab police station, where he was detained and his passport was confiscated.
He was travelling with his wife, AW, and their children when he was arrested in April. They had been due to return to the UK on May 1, so his family returned without him.
Dr Mensah is a Ghana-born British national, and came to UAE at the invitation of the US Cleveland Clinic, which was building a medical centre here. His father is a senior minister in Ghana and a national security adviser to the president.
The next hearing is scheduled for August 3.
salamir@thenational.ae