Three men jailed and fined Dhs1.9 million on assault and robbery charges in Dubai

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Criminal Court sentenced a driver and two accomplices to seven years in jail to be followed by deportation and fined them Dhs1.9 million for kidnapping an investor and stealing Dhs1.9 million from him after threatening to kill him.

The defendants left the victim handcuffed in his vehicle and ran away with the money, which they hid with a fourth man. The court also ordered that the fourth defendant be deported.

The case dated back to last September in Downtown Dubai when the investor asked his driver to take him to his workplace in the Gold Souk but the latter stopped the car, claiming that there was a vehicle malfunction.

According to the victim, as soon as the driver got out of the vehicle, he was taken by surprise by two others, who beat him and threatened to kill him with a knife that they were brandishing.

The two defendants told him that they were policemen and that he was under arrest and had to accompany them in their vehicle, the victim said. When he victim refused to comply, the two defendants kept assaulting him until he was forced to go with them, he added.

There, the driver and the two defendants told him that he would need to provide Dhs4 million as a ransom, he said, adding that he called his wife and friend to provide the money and asked his friend to hand it over to a person carrying a banknote with specific serial number.

The victim’s friend handed Dhs1.7 million over to the gang members but the latter asked for more. The victim then called one of his employees and asked him to take Dhs200,000 from the company’s safe and give it to one of the defendants.

After receiving the money, the defendants handcuffed the victim’s hands and feet and put a blindfold over his eyes before one of them drove his vehicle and left him on the side of a street. Later, the victim managed to untie his hands and went to the police station where he filed a complaint.

According to the official documents, a team of detectives gathered inferences and managed to locate the driver and his two accomplices. The defendants were arrested inside a farm where the fourth defendant used to work. Some Dhs1.6 million was seized in the defendants’ possession.

On interrogation, the driver admitted that he planned with his two accomplices to rob the investor because he was rich, adding that they set a date for their robbery.

The fourth defendant denied that he had participated in the robbery or had any idea about the defendants’ plan. He justified the presence of the defendants in the farm where he worked by the fact that the driver was his friend.