DUBAI // A maid working illegally who handed herself into police after the death of the father of her illegitimate child was this week sentenced to three months in jail and fined Dh1,000.
MS, 27, from Ethiopia, was arrested in March 2012 after handing herself into police, admitting to them that she was working illegally. Fearing that she would be jailed on sex-out-of-wedlock charges, she provided them with a forged marriage certificate.
Police saw through the forgery and charged her with both consensual sex outside of wedlock and overstaying her visa.
Prosecutors told the Criminal Court she gave birth to her child near the end of 2011 shortly after its father died from a diabetes-related illness.
She met the father, Orwa Abu Bakir, 31, from Sudan, after absconding from her sponsor in 2009 and the pair had lived together for two years before his death during Ramadan on August 2, 2011. Three months later, she gave birth to a baby girl.
She claimed to have married Orwa in Sudan in 2010 in the presence of her father, but prosecutors said she could not have done so because her sponsor reported her to police in March 2009 for absconding and she would not have been able to leave the country as an arrest warrant was issued.
She then claimed that she had forgotten where the marriage took place.
"Orwa handled the marriage papers but I don't know how or where it took place," she said.
A letter from the Court Department in Sudan said that they had no record of the marriage and that the contract she had given police was forged.
The Criminal Court sentenced the maid to three months in prison to be followed by deportation on the sex charge and fined her Dh1,000 on the illegal residence charge.
Her child will stay in prison with her.
salamir@thenational.ae
