Lawyer cleared of assaulting police officers

DUBAI // A lawyer accused of assaulting two police officers following a custody dispute over his stepchildren was acquitted by the Misdemeanour Court.

The two Emirati officers SS, 24, and EA, 22, said they had arrested SB, a 48-year-old Egyptian, on August 29 last year after responding to reports of a dispute in Al Barsha.

"We received a call regarding a dispute between a couple over the custody of their children," said one of the officers.

He said that when they arrived the father of the children complained that his ex-wife had taken the children at 5pm but not returned them after two hours as per orders by the sharia court that granted him custody.

It was after 11pm when the ex-wife finally arrived with the children, along with her current husband, the lawyer.

Police asked the lawyer for identification but he failed to present any and they decided to charge him for driving without a licence.

The two officers claimed that when they tried to handcuff the lawyer and get him into their car he resisted, twisting one of the officer's arms then pushing him away.

However, the lawyer denied the officers' accounts.

"Police insisted that I was driving the car although I told them the car was my wife's and she was driving," said the lawyer, who said that one of the policemen had kneed him in the genitals after dragging him to the patrol car.

"They hit me all over my body using the handcuffs and allowed my wife's ex-husband to hit me on the face," he added.

The officers are appealing the verdict. The next hearing was scheduled for October 11.