Man sentenced in Dubai for filming female flatmates with hidden cameras

Filipino shared a flat with three female compatriots and installed cameras in the bathroom and in a bedroom.

DUBAI // A man who installed hidden cameras in the bathroom and a bedroom of his apartment to record his female flatmates taking showers and getting dressed has been sentenced to three months in jail.

J R, 37, from the Philippines, shared a flat with three female compatriots, M, M L and L A M.

M L, 34, told Dubai Criminal Court that she arrived home in November last year and found M, whose age was not given, in a distressed state after she discovered a camera in the bathroom.

“She showed me a device disguised as a clothes hanger mounted on the bathroom door. I took it off and found that it was a camera,” said the woman, who took the device to a police station along with two laptops that belonged to J R.

Prosecutors said he confessed to recording women when questioned by officers.

“I installed a hidden camera in the woman’s bedroom while she was taking a shower so that could I watch her getting dressed,” he said.

J R was charged with attempted sexual assault of M L and L A M, whose age was not given, and sexual assault of another unidentified women.

He did not show up in court so was sentenced in absentia to three months, to be followed by deportation.