Moosa killer loses his final appeal

A fishing boat captain who raped and murdered a four-year-old in a Dubai mosque has had his death sentence by firing squad confirmed.

Mukhtiar Ahmed Khudabaksh with his daughter Miriam aged 15 months at his home in Dubai after the final ruling on the murder of his son Moosa.

DUBAI // One of Dubai's most shocking murder cases has come to an end after the Dubai Court of Cassation denied the paedophile killer of a four-year-old boy a chance of a retrial and confirmed that he will face a firing squad. The fishing boat captain Rashid al Rashidi, 30, raped and murdered Moosa Mukhtiar Ahmed in a mosque on the first day of last year's Eid al Adha holiday. His death sentence was confirmed yesterday by the emirate's highest appellate court. The decision was the last step in the legal process before the case is referred to the office of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to be signed off for execution. The Court of Cassation upheld the appeals and lower courts verdicts after it reviewed the legality of their procedures and ruled they were within the law. The murder stirred feelings of fear and anxiety among the public in Dubai, prompting Essam Eissa al Humaidan, the Dubai attorney general, to vow that the maximum punishment would be pursued against al Rashidi. The legal community was initially loath to defend al Rashidi, with his first court-appointed lawyer refusing to represent him and calling him an embarrassment to humanity. Al Rashidi was first sentenced to death by the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance on January 27, a decision confirmed by the Dubai Court of Appeals on April 1. On the evening of November 27, al Rashidi had been drinking alcohol in Umm al Quwain. He continued drinking in a cemetery near his home in al Qusais. He attended prayers at the Bin Tahnoon mosque in al Qusais the next morning and afterwards loitered in the area. At about 10am, Moosa, his brother and a friend approached al Rashidi for an Eid gift and he told the four-year-old to follow him into the mosque to collect it. It was in the grounds of the mosque that al Rashidi forced the boy into a toilet, where he raped and killed him by smashing his head against the floor. Moosa's body was found about two hours later. Police rounded up all the registered sex offenders in the neighbourhood and within four hours al Rashidi, who had been convicted of two previous assaults, had confessed. He had been released after serving a three-year jail sentence just a few months before the killing. Mohammed al Saadi, who initially took on al Rashidi's defence, said his client was abused during childhood, left school at seven and by 14 had drifted into drug and alcohol abuse. He suggested al Rashidi might be suffering from acute paranoia or a persecution complex. However, a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation found he was aware of his actions. [e-mail]