Woman from Takikistan also charged with entering the country illegally via boat.

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Salam Al Amir

DUBAI // A 29-year-old woman charged with being a prostitute begged a court on Monday to not separate her from her newborn baby boy.

The woman, AM, from Tajikistan, and her Omani lover SS, 40, were arrested during Ramadan in an apartment in Al Baraha while she was preparing a Sahour meal.

AM, who at the time was said to be pregnant from a liason with an unknown client, was taken into custody on three charges, including infiltrating the country through sea.

She was also charged with having consensual sex outside wedlock with the Omani and the father of her child, and with the prostitution charge.

At the Dubai Criminal Court on Monday she denied the prostitution charge and will appear at the Dubai Court of Misdemeanours on the consensual sex charge. A hearing at the residency court is to be scheduled for the infiltrating the country charge.

“I didn’t work in prostitution,” said the Tajik woman to judges thought a translator.

“Please don’t keep me away from my baby; I’m so scared that he will be taken away from me,” she added while begging the court to give her a verdict soon.

From police records, AM said she was deported from the UAE in 2005. In January this year she arrived by sea in Fujairah, entering the country illegally.

“There was a car waiting for us when we arrived and it took us to Ajman, where the woman who arranged for our trip was waiting. I paid her Dh7,000 in fees and then left to Dubai, where I lived with a woman I knew,” she said in the records.

AM said she met her baby’s father at a nightclub and the two became intimate but, when she became pregnant, he left the country.

A few weeks later she met SS and moved in with him and he started paying for her keep.

“We met at the dance club and became close,” said the Omani, who faces charges of housing an illegal resident and having consensual sex with her.

“Later she told me she was an illegal resident so I asked her to correct her situation.”

The Criminal Court will issue a verdict on November 18.

salamir@thenational.ae