Officer denies having sex with prostitute in parked car, Dubai court hears

A police officer caught with a prostitute in his car in the middle of the night told a Dubai court he was merely helping to solve her problems.

DUBAI // A police officer caught with a prostitute in his car in the middle of the night told a court yesterday he was merely helping to solve her problems.

But the prostitute told prosecutors they were having sex and that he had promised to pay her Dh200 - and never settled the bill.

The 37-year-old Yemeni AM, who is married and has been with the force since 1992, said he met the prostitute RM, 28, about two months ago at a market where she asked him for directions.

"She told me she worked at a beauty salon and when she found out I was a policeman she told me a man had ripped her off and she asked for my help," the policeman testified.

He said that the prostitute had called him and asked to meet so that she could explain her problem to him. He picked her up in his Nissan Maxima late at night and parked in a residential area of Al Hamriya shortly after midnight on April 11.

Unknown to the officer, a police patrol nearby noticed him parking. The officers became suspicious when he turned off the lights but did not leave the vehicle. They kept the car under surveillance for about an hour and a half before checking on the vehicle and finding the two together in the car.

Prosecutors said that he willingly confessed to the arresting officers that he was having sex with the prostitute in his car, having agreed to pay her Dh200.

In court, the policeman denied making any such confession, adding that he did not even know why he had been arrested, though he did concede: "I know it was wrong to be alone with a strange woman in my car."

But the prostitute's account to prosecutors contradicted the policeman. "He called me and asked that we have sex for Dh200, we had sex but he did not give me the money," she said according to prosecution records. She added that they met in a supermarket in Bur Dubai.

The prostitute said she was deported from Dubai about five years ago, but returned two years ago using a different name on a fake passport she bought from a man in her home country of Bangladesh. She said she had been prostituting herself ever since arriving back in the emirate, but that this was her first time with an Arab.

The policeman is being tried at the Misdemeanour Court where he denied a charge of having sex out of wedlock. The case was adjourned to November 5. The prostitute will be put on trial at the Criminal Court on a charge of prostitution. A date for her hearing has not yet been set.