Woman who alleged rape jailed

I was so upset to read about this. This was the same story I had on my blog a couple of weeks back about an 18 year old girl who retracted her rape claim after claiming 5 men raped her. She has been jailed for a year for consensual sex, and I guess the saddest thing is that she did not have any family or lawyers with her in court. According to Syariah Law, to prove rape, the accused has to confess to it, or the act has to be witnessed by 4 grown men...


ABU DHABI // A teenager who alleged she was gang-raped by five men but later recanted her claim has been sentenced to a year in prison for consensual sex.

The five she had initially accused were acquitted of rape by the Abu Dhabi Criminal Court yesterday, but were found guilty of less serious charges.

The Emirati teenager LH, 18, was found to have consented to intercourse with YM, a 19-year-old military police officer who was also sentenced to a year in jail after the rape charge against him was changed to one of consensual sex by the judge.

Two other defendants, both referred to as HA, were sentenced to three months in prison each for being alone in the company of a woman.

The fifth and sixth defendants were fined Dh5,000 each for violations of public decency.

The latter verdicts represented rare court rulings in which Sharia law was directly imposed. Police rarely arrest people based on such charges alone; more often they are secondary charges typically connected to sex offences.

LH has been in custody since filing the complaint. She was never appointed a lawyer during the trial, and none of her family members appeared in court during the proceedings.

According to the forensics report submitted to the court LH reported the incident on April 23.

enetic material recovered from the scene led the judge to convict YM of consensual sex, while acquitting HA.

The forensics report found that LH was not a virgin and that there was no genital bruising. It found 12 bruises ranging from 1cm to 7cm long on her upper lip, hands, thighs, knee and behind her left ear.

“Some of the bruises are new, two to three days old, and some of them are old, seven to 15 days old,” the report said. The report attributed the bruises to body pressure or being hit with something solid.

During the trial, prosecutors claimed that LH had gone for a drive on May 2 with her male Emirati friend, HA, in Baniyas, where they had intercourse. Prosecutors said the fact she agreed to go with him alone in the car partly showed her consent to sex.

They said that, HA, 19, then called five of his friends – four Emiratis and one Iraqi – and invited them to join him in raping her in the backseat of his Nissan Altima. Charges against one defendant were later dropped.

On May 25, LH retracted her accusation of rape.

Despite this, only the Public Prosecution had the authority to drop the rape charges – which they did not.

Within two days of the incident, LH had been tested by the forensics unit at the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department. Evidence of assault was cited by the public prosecution in charging the men with rape. LH told the court that bruises on her body came from a beating administered by her brother because he suspected she had relationships with men.

Each of the six has 15 days to appeal the verdict.

Whale Shark in the Marina

Just one of those weeks..

I've had one of those really crazy weeks where everything that could go wrong does! The biggest contributor to my pain was Etisalat (yes the ordeal isn't over!) I stupidly decided that I wanted to upgrade my package so that I could get free World Cup coverage (it's normally USD100 - robbery!). It has been 2 weeks since I applied and I still have not got it activated yet. The technician came twice, and didn't do anything. He told me that he could not change the receiver because Etisalat (he's a subby) didn't give him permission to. So after hours calling Etisalat and them not answering, I finally decided to go to their office, and yet after that, nothing has changed and I bet they are already charging me for the extra for the upgrade. I think I'm going to write to the press about this, I don't think there is any other way to solve it.

Then today I was supposed to go diving, woke up at 6am to pack and get moving, and then realised that my back windscreen would not stay up. So i couldn't go diving as it would have been too dangerous to drive to Dubai with a falling windscreen,

On a positive note, I had the chance to swim and dive with a whale shark that decided to pay a visit to a marina here in Abu Dhabi. I'll put a video up of it separately, I'm so happy that she has escaped and gone back to sea!

Crazy Traffic Jam

I got stuck in the worst traffic jam that Abu Dhabi has ever seen 2 nights ago. What normally takes me 15 minutes turned into 1.5 hours, and literally it took me 1 hour 20 minutes to cover 2km. I really wanted to dump my car and walk home but there was no way to park. Apparently the reason was that a crane broke down in the city, causing 2 streets to close. That was the official reason. The other contributing factor that wasn't obviously reported was that they closed off 1 major exit out of the city for a VIP event. Nice one, let the whole city come to a grinding halt to let some VIPs through.

I read today that a lady nearly delivered in her car as she could not get to the hospital on time. Thankfully an ambulance got to her 1/2 hour before her delivery to bring her to the closest hospital..story here

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100603/NATIONAL/706029831&SearchID=73392676144537