British journalist gets 7 years for killing wife

Ihab Atta, Staff Reporter

The appellate Court of Dubai on Wednesday sentenced a British journalist charged with murdering his wife to seven years in jail to be followed by deportation after serving the jail term.

The court heard the suspect’s defence at a previous session where the lawyer demanded that the sentence be commuted to just two years.

The lawyer demanded a re-description of the charge of an attack resulting in death, rather than murder.

He added the charge of murder is applied in the case of his client who is responsible for the attack, but not the consequent death of the victim. He pointed out that there is evidence affirming that the suspect did not intend to kill his wife as he bought airline tickets for both of them to travel to their country to attend the graduation ceremony of their son.

The lawyer’s request to commute the sentence came after the son of the victim and her father waived the case and due to the bad psychological conditions of the suspect.

Details of the case date back to July 2017 when the Dubai police received a call from the suspect alleged his wife had been assaulted by a group of thieves at their home in Jumeirah.

Reports showed that she died of a severe blow to her head, which raised suspicions about the husband. On being interrogated by police and the prosecution, he admitted attacking his wife with a hammer, saying he had no intention of killing her.

Separately, a company employee abused his powers and asked for a bribe of around Dhs33,000 from other employees of a number of companies against leaking data and bids of their respective companies in tenders announced by the company he was working for. This caused losses of Dhs432,000 to his company.

The case, which was investigated by Dubai Public Prosecution, dates back to the period between 2015 and 2017 when the defendant asked other employees in other companies to give him money as bribes against disclosing the bids of competitive companies submitted for tenders announced by his company, enabling these companies to submit lower prices and be awarded the tenders.

The defendant confessed to the charge in detail during the interrogations. He said he deleted bids from competitive companies from the email of his immediate manager and his own email so that the bids of the companies that bribed him could be considered. He explained to the public prosecution the amounts he received from each company and the losses incurred by his company amounting to around Dhs432,000.