Policeman to serve 10 years for rape after losing appeal

Officer took his victim to an abandoned house where he threatened, assaulted and raped her after earning her trust by telling her he was a police officer.

DUBAI // A policeman convicted of rape has lost an appeal against an increased jail term.

Emirati officer S A, 28, was sentenced to five years in jail by Dubai Criminal Court in June after being found guilty of rape and physical assaults.

Prosecutors appealed against the verdict, seeking a harsher punishment, while the rapist also appealed, seeking acquittal. Dubai Court of Appeal doubled the length of his jail term in November.

In both the Criminal and Appeal courts, S A denied luring a woman into his car then taking her to an abandoned house where he assaulted and raped her. “I graduated from the academy four months ago with honours and recently joined the police. I have an elderly mother who I care for. I didn’t do this,” S A said during a hearing in February last year.

Records showed that on September 14, 2014, the policeman offered a lift to R P, whose age and nationality were not available. The woman told prosecutors that she took up his offer when she knew he was an officer of the law.

The man then took her to an abandoned house in Al Rashidiya, where he threatened her, assaulted her and raped her despite her resistance and screams. Prosecutors said the woman begged him not to rape her, but he ignored her.

The policeman was also charged with carrying out a task that he was not assigned by his employer, namely stopping the woman and asking her for identification. He used this as a means to then rape her.

Court records did not provide information about how the matter had been reported to police but they showed that the woman and her clothes were tested. The lab report confirmed that she had had sexual intercourse and it confirmed that DNA matching that of the rapist was found on her clothes and body.

The officer took his case to Dubai Court of Cassation seeking an acquittal but he lost after the court upheld the verdict of the Appeals Court.