A man was sentenced to three months in jail followed by deportation for threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend via an iMessage.
The Chinese man denied charges in Dubai Criminal Court last August and said the issue began following a personal dispute after which the woman decided to frame him.
“She took his apartment and gave it away for rent, then his mother’s car, which she also rented and refused to give my client the due sums,” said the man’s lawyer.
He said whenever his client called the woman to demand the money, she threatened to land him in trouble by reporting him to police and accusing him of doing harm to her.
"She then blackmailed him by telling him to stop asking for the money or she would frame him with the police," said the lawyer to judges.
Prosecutors said that the 23-year-old defendant sent an iPhone iMessage to her mother, in which he wrote: "If she does not solve this, I will kill her."
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The Chinese woman, 27, told prosecutors that she had been in a relationship with the defendant for about two years but broke up with him in January following several disputes.
“It was then when he started to harass me and in March he asked me to pay him the value of all the gifts that he bought me when we were together,” she said, adding that he kept on calling and messaging but she did not answer him.
She said that he came to her Al Rashidiya home but she refused to open the door for him.
“On May 28 he sent my mother a message threatening to kill me, so I reported him to police,” said the woman.
Police apprehended the man and, during questioning, he denied sending the message. Prosecutors said that he admitted to threatening the woman but in court he denied it.
A report stated that the man's phone was checked and an outgoing message containing death threats was found on it
Dubai Criminal Court also ordered the confiscation of his phone.
