DUBAI // A diplomat's son charged with murdering his sister's Emirati boyfriend thought he was stabbing an intruder in self-defence, a court has been told.
The defendant, a 20-year-old student identified as AD, told prosecutors he had awoken just after midnight on Nov 10 in his parents' Jumeirah mansion.
AD said he was supposed to have been alone in the house with his sister, AA, 23, and four sleeping housemaids.
He told the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance he was having dinner when he heard his sister's bedroom door opening and shutting several times upstairs, and the lift running four or five times.
AD investigated the noises but found nothing and went back downstairs. When he later heard the lift running again, he grabbed a bread knife.
"I went to the lift and pressed the button so it stopped at the ground floor before going down to the basement.
"Before opening the elevator door I could see a medium-height man wearing sports pants and shirt and a cap," AD said.
"I opened the door and noticed his rippling muscles and I got scared.
''I asked him to identify himself and what he was doing here.
''He tried to push me aside and ran to the back door which leads to the garage." AD said he chased the intruder into the courtyard, scuffled with him and stabbed him twice in the stomach.
The man, identified as BJ, 32, fled to his car and drove to the home of a relative, a policeman, who drove him to hospital where he died hours later.
AA told prosecutors she had been in a year-long relationship with BJ, who on Nov 9 declared he wanted to marry her.
She said that at 1.30am on Nov 10, he told her he was coming to see her.
She thought he was joking and was surprised to find BJ outside her bedroom just before 2am.
A A was concerned her brother would find him and tried to get him out, eventually telling him to take the lift to the basement.
The case has been adjourned until Feb 24.
hbathish@thenational.ae
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
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