Dubai ‘suicide bomb belt’ woman and co-conspirator to face security trial

Woman who threatened to blow herself up at the Public Prosecution building has been referred to the State Security Court – along with a Gulf national accused of helping her to build the explosive belt.

A prosecution service worker took this picture which is believed to be of the woman who sparked the bomb threat at Dubai courts.

DUBAI // A woman accused of threatening to blow herself up with a suicide-bomb belt in the Public Prosecution building in Dubai is to be tried at the State Security Court in Abu Dhabi.

Prosecutors say Zulfiya Hamraeva, 33, from Uzbekistan, walked into the building with her son, 10, and said she would detonate the belt unless a paternity test was carried out on they boy. She claims he is the product of an extramarital affair with a Gulf state national.

The woman will be tried along with another Gulf state national accused of making the belt, which turned out to contain no explosives.

“What she did comes under the jurisdiction of the Federal Supreme Court, therefore the case has been referred to the Security Court,” said Essam Al Humaidan, Dubai’s Attorney General.

Al Humaidan said that while the belt was fake the woman’s actions had nevertheless caused terror, posed a risk to public safety and had shaken belief in the safety of the community.

Prosecutors say that during interrogation the woman said the man who made the belt had come up with the idea of her going to the Public Prosecution building and threatening to blow herself up.

The incident began at midday on September 1 and the resultant standoff lasted until after midnight, when she surrendered to authorities.

The woman filed a case in Sharjah’s Sharia Court in 2007 in an attempt to prove the paternity of her child, but the court declined to pursue it.