Ehab Atta, Staff Reporter
The Court of Misdemeanours in Dubai on Monday fined the four defendants in the mutual assault and insult case, including the Arab actor Zeina, her sister, the American tourist and his wife, Dhs10,000 each.
The case was reviewed through several stages by the Misdemeanour Court in Dubai.
In the last stage, the American family’s lawyer Awatif Mohammed pleaded that the case be returned to the Dubai Prosecution to charge the actor and her sister with assaulting a 12-year-old girl, the daughter of the tourist and his wife.
The Misdemeanours Court closed the case by fining the defendants.
The witness, who was a customer at the restaurant in which the incident took place, testified that he saw the actress assaulting the girl and when he tried to stop the actress from hitting the girl, he was himself assaulted by the actress’s sister.
The Egyptian actress, 41, and her sister, 38, were inside a Dubai hotel on June 29 last year when they reportedly attacked an American tourist and his wife upon suspecting that their daughter, 12, was illicitly filming them.
Dubai Police received a report of the incident and an officer went to the scene. The actress, her sister and the tourists were taken to Al Barsha police station. The 47-year-old man accused the actress of yelling at and cursing his daughter at the hotel, accusing the child of filming her in her swimming suit.
The man tried to explain to the actress that his daughter does not know Arabic and she was taking pictures of his five-year-old son, but the actress and her sister assaulted him, his wife and daughter, he told the police.
The actress snatched the phone from girl’s hands and broke it while her sister bit him in the shoulder, he added.
In a unrelated case, the Court of Misdemeanours in Fujairah recently slapped an African man with a fine of Dhs50,000 over a bootlegging charge.
The case dates back to the time when the police arrested and interrogated three people who were intoxicated. They confessed that they had purchased alcohol from the defendant.