Dubai, March 23: The Court of First Instance sentenced two Afghans to death on Tuesday for stabbing a sex worker to death.
The woman had 23 knife wounds on her body.
Presiding Judge Al Saeed Bargouth also sentenced an Uzbek woman to six-month imprisonment for indulging in prostitution. She will be deported after serving her jail term.
The two Afghans — a worker and an unemployed — were also accused of confining and threatening to kill the Uzbek visitor if she did not obey them. They had pleaded not guilty to the charge of premeditated murder of the prostitute when they appeared in the court on June 1 last year.
The two men told the Presiding Judge that they went to the victim’s apartment with an intention to rob her and denied planning to stab and kill her.
The forensic medicine report showed that the victim had 23 stab wounds.
The 42-year-old Uzbek visitor told the prosecutors that she had known the victim for only three days before the incident while she had lived with her.
On February 21, the two Afghans allegedly went to the victim’s apartment in Muraqqabat at night as the worker wanted to reconcile with the victim over a previous dispute. They brought them fruits and had sex with the two women.
As she was getting ready to sleep, the Uzbek woman heard her friend screaming. She got up to see what was happening but the unemployed who was with her stopped her and threatened her with a knife. He punched and kicked her and she got injured while trying to protect herself from the knife.
She later saw the first defendant holding a knife covered with blood. The duo asked her where her friend was hiding her money and she told them she did not know. The duo then tied her up, snatched away her cellphone and the cash she had, and locked her up in a bathroom.
After struggling in there for about five hours, the Uzbek woman managed to get out and saw the body of her friend lying in a pool of blood. She sought the help of the watchman who called the police.
Based on the Uzbek’s descriptions, the police tracked down the two Asians. The police seized the knives used in the crime which still had the barcode of the shop from where the defendants purchased them.
–Agencies–