DUBAI // A 50-year-old Syrian denied on Tuesday morning molesting a girl as she was grocery shopping with her mother.
H A was charged with sexual assault at Dubai Criminal Court in relation to the incident on December 1 last year at Union Cooperative Society in Al Muraqqabat.
The 36-year-old Egyptian mother, D M, said: “He came towards me and asked me about the kind of tomatoes in the cooperative and which is best. I answered him then went on my way but noticed that he was around me wherever I went, so I thought he wanted to flirt with me.”
The mother, who is a teacher, said the defendant remained close to her and her daughter in every section of the shop they went to. When they left and headed to their car, the mother asked her daughter to return the trolley while she waited in the car.
“It didn’t take more than a minute but she returned in a hurry, very scared and breathing heavily. When I asked her what was wrong with her, she said a man had touched her,” said D M, who returned to the supermarket assuming that one of the employees had touched her daughter.
“When I was shown the camera footage, we saw the defendant following my daughter to where she dropped the trolley,” said D M.
The mother reported him to police and told them how he had been following them.
The next hearing will be on March 27.
salamir@thenational.ae
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
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Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.