Woman ‘kidnapped and molested by Dubai gang’

A woman was kidnapped and molested by a gang who tried to blackmail her into paying them Dh4,000, hears court.

DUBAI // A woman was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and made to dance naked while being filmed by a gang who afterwards threatened her with death and blackmail, a court heard yesterday.

Prosecutors said that on March 27 this year the gang bundled the woman into a car and knocked her unconscious.

“I woke up to find myself in a strange flat,” recalled the woman. She said that D K, 28, a woman from Uzbekistan, and four men then forced her to strip.

The Uzbek watched and laughed as the men assaulted and molested the woman.

“They forced me to dance while naked and threatened to send the recording to my family back home unless I paid them Dh4,000 – and they threatened to kill me too,” she recalled.

She told the Dubai Criminal Court that the demands related to a disagreement over a visit visa the Uzbek had helped her obtain in December last year.

“When she issued me the visa she told me it cost Dh3,000, but when I arrived in Dubai she started demanding I pay her a further Dh4,000.”

The woman said that after signing the debt papers, the Uzbek and the four men stole her purse which contained Dh1,500, US$5,000, perfume and a mobile phone.

She was then driven back to her apartment and told once more she needed to find a way of paying the gang. As she had no way of doing so she decided to inform police.

Police arrested the Uzbek woman but failed to identify the four men.

D K denied charges of kidnap, blackmail and theft.

The next hearing was scheduled for November 20.