DUBAI // Two men who were sentenced to life in jail for kidnapping, raping and assaulting a woman have won reduced sentences.
The jobless Pakistanis, aged 36 and 28, pretended to be police officers before they kidnapped and raped a maid then assaulted her friend.
They stopped their 29-year-old Filipina victim and her Indian friend as they walked out of Al Safa Park in November, 2013, then forced them into a small van.
“When we left about 5.30pm, we were stopped by the defendants, who said they were CID officers,” said the woman.
She added that the defendants questioned their reasons for being in the park, and ordered them to attend a police station.
“We begged them not to take us to a police station as they forced us into a white van,” she said. The two fake cops took the maid’s phone, Dh300 from her purse and her friend’s wallet.
The victim appealed to the pair to let them go but she and her friend were assaulted, after which the van was stopped and her friend was thrown out of it and ordered not to contact her friend again.
The maid then again begged her captors to release her, at which point one of them told her that he would if she pleasured him.
The two then took turns raping her in the back seat of the van before giving her back her purse and mobile and dropping her off near her home, from where she called police.
At Dubai Criminal Court in June 2015 both defendants denied charges of kidnap, impersonating police officers, theft, rape and physical assault but both were convicted and sentenced to life in jail, to be followed by deportation.
Dubai Court of Appeal on Thursday reduced the sentences to 15 years in jail each, to be followed by deportation.
salamir@thenational.ae
