DUBAI // A man who stabbed a cinema-goer he believed was harassing his sister has been sentenced to a year in prison.
WK, an unemployed Emirati, 21, stabbed the salesman OA, 30, from Pakistan, in the back, abdomen and leg during the attack outside the cinema in July 2011.
The salesman had been having a cigarette break with his brother when his attacker and a number of other men approached them and began fighting. The fight was broken up by an Emirati soldier, AM, 23, when he noticed the salesman being stabbed. He intervened and pulled the injured man out of the fracas before taking him to Rashid Hospital.
The salesman's injuries were so severe he required hospital treatment for a month. A doctor quoted in the trial said that had the salesman been left just a few more minutes without treatment he would probably have died.
At the Criminal Court, the Emirati denied a charge of attempted murder, claiming that the salesman and three other men had attacked him and that he was merely defending himself.
He claimed that he did not have a knife and that he only used his fists during the fight.
"We fought your honour but I did not stab him," he told presiding judge Hamad Abdul Latif.
salamir@thenational.ae
