DUBAI // A man who blinded an American teacher at a nightclub by smashing a glass bottle into her face has been sentenced to six months in prison.
The Criminal Court found W A, 36, an engineer from Palestine, guilty on a charge of assault – but it also found the nightclub’s security guard E S, 27, from Egypt, guilty of assaulting the man after the attack, and he too was given six months.
The Palestinian was celebrating a birth in his family with some relatives at the Barasti beach bar on September 21 last year when the teacher sat in his seat.
A squabble between the two broke out, which culminated in the Palestinian smashing a glass bottle into the teacher’s face, leaving her blind in the left eye.
The guard then restrained the Palestinian, and assaulted one of his brothers when he tried to intervene, punching him so hard that he broke a cheekbone and lost consciousness. “I didn’t know what happened to me until I woke up in an ambulance,” recalled the brother K A.
The Palestinian claimed the teacher had started the fight by kicking him in the leg and scratching him when he tried to take his chair back. She made the same claim.
The American teacher and some of the brothers have been referred to the Misdemeanours Court, but records did not specify the charges.
salamir@thenational.ae
