DUBAI // The 10-year-old son of a woman who threatened to detonate a bomb belt in a court building insisted on Sunday that his mother was innocent.
He told the Dubai Criminal Court that his mother, Zulfiya Hamraeva, 33, from Uzbekistan, had been forced to wear the device by the other defendant, M Y A, a 28-year-old Emirati.
The boy, who accompanies his mother to all court hearings and is with her in prison, was not scheduled to testify, but stood up to speak.
A policewoman tried to lead him away by his arm, but the judge told her to let him speak.
“My mother is poor, she is innocent,” said the boy in broken Arabic. “He [M Y A] was the one who pushed my mother to do what she did. My mother is poor.”
“Do you have anything else you want to say? We are listening to you,” the judge said to the boy.
Hamraeva is on trial for threatening to blow up the Dubai Public Prosecution building and spreading terror on September 1 last year over a paternity row with J S A, 49, an Emirati who she claims is the biological father of her son.
M Y A, a police officer from Fujairah, has denied aiding and abetting Hamraeva and building the belt for her.
After the boy spoke in court, there was another disruption when his mother was accused of insulting a witness.
Police officer M A A, 47, the negotiator on the day of the bomb threat, was testifying when the defendant said something to him.
The officer started arguing with the defendant, forcing the judge to intervene, asking: “What’s going on?”
“She said I am a devil,” said M A A.
The defendant’s lawyer refuted the claim, saying that her client did not say “devil” but had called the officer a “liar”.
Hamraeva was referred to the prosecution on charges of insulting the court and the witness.
The court also heard from J S A, who said he had met Hamraeva in 2003, and 10 days later she claimed she was pregnant by him.
“We both went to Ajman court and I was acquitted, but she was jailed for one month,” he said.
Three years later she filed a law suit against him in Sharjah to prove he was the father of her son. The case was dismissed based on the evidence of the Ajman court.
"Again I was acquitted but she caused me many family problems and started calling me," said J S A, who is a member of the Armed Forces. "On August 20 she sent me a picture of the explosive belt along with a voice message saying that I would see the bombing."
He told the court he did not take her threats seriously and was astonished when she actually carried them out.
“She had been asking me to admit the boy is my son but I was not sure,” he said. “She also demanded that I give her Dh3 million and a villa.”
The case was adjourned until January 29.
salamir@thenational.ae
