Dubai bomb belt woman has sentence reduced by five years, Dubai Court of Appeal rules

DUBAI // The woman who wore a fake bomb belt to the public prosecution headquarters and threatened to detonate it has had her jail term reduced on appeal on Wednesday morning.

Zulfiya Hamraeva, 33, was sentenced to seven years by Dubai Criminal Court but the appeals court reduced her jail term to just two years. An explanation of the reduction was not given. The Uzbek was convicted over the bomb belt incident, which took place on September 1 last year. The charges were of threatening prosecution employees and visitors, using threats in an attempt to force authorities to do a DNA test to prove that an Emirati man is the father of her 10-year-old son and of deliberately endangering the lives and safety of people and spreading terror among them.

Her Emirati accomplice, MYA, 28, who was given two years for making the bomb belt, had his term reduced to one year.

However, the appeals court upheld the rest of the verdict issued by the lower court in March.

Hamraeva had sent a picture of the fake bomb to JSA, 49, the man she claims is the father of her son. Then she threatened to set it off if the DNA test was not carried out to prove that JSA was the biological father.

The Emirati man testified that her met Hamraeva in 2003 and 10 days later she claimed she was pregnant by him.

An Ajman court acquitted him and jailed Hamraeva for one month for adultery. Three years later, she filed another paternity case at a Sharjah court and, again, JSA was acquitted.

“On August 20 last year she sent me the picture of the belt but I didn’t take the threat seriously,” said JSA, adding that she again wanted him to admit that he was the father and that she wanted Dh3 million and a villa from him.

Hamraeva and her accomplice denied all charges against them in both the criminal and appeals courts.

Records stated that when Hamraeva opened up her abaya in the centre of the prosecution building and made the bomb threats, people were terrified and started rushing outside.

“Her belt looked very much real, with its wire hooked to a detonator. This happened for the first time in the UAE and it’s so grave — others may try to do like she did,” said MAA, a negotiator who worked with the woman at the time.

After nearly 13 hours of negotiations, she surrendered and the belt was found to be an elaborate fake.

Lawyers of both defendants said their clients were innocent and asked that they be acquitted.

Muna Al Khaja, the young Emirati lawyer who defended Hamraeva throughout her trial, told The National: "Despite the fact that it's a just verdict I will appeal and take the case to the cassation court seeking a judicial pardon, basing my request on her emotional and even physical conditions. She is a mother and this woman needs help."

The lawyer said Hamraeva was very happy about the verdict. The defendant was not in court to hear the verdict because, her lawyer said, she had been in hospital with her son, who has a high temperature and chest infection.

Ms Al Khaja, who took on the case and other related cases for free, said that her client did not commit a criminal act and there was a very clear incitement from her Emirati accomplace.

“He motivated her to do what she did – he told her he was a police captain and this act is not criminal. He was doing so because she had lent him Dh1.65 million, which he used to build his villa in Fujairah and I have a statement from him confessing this,” Ms Al Khaja said.

The lawyer also said there was a civil marriage between Hamraeva and JSA and that she intends to pursue the matter through the courts to prove it is true and that the boy is JSA’s. “I asked the court to cross-examine a man who signed the marriage contract but JSA denied the existence of this man,” said the lawyer, who added that she tracked down the man.

Ms Al Khaja said JSA confessed that the son was his when the boy called him from prison last year. “He even said in his call to Zulvia and the boy that he decided to admit the son is his and that he would amend his situation but then he changed his mind,” she said.

Both the defendants’ terms were reduced on appeal on Wednesday but Hamraeva’s deportation order when she finishes the sentence remains.