Jail term for UAE trio who posed as cops, kidnapped men

Abu Dhabi - The defendants stopped the victims on the road and showed them fake ID cards.

Three men who were convicted of kidnapping two persons and stealing their money after posing as policemen have had their five-year-jail sentences confirmed.

The Federal Supreme Court has upheld earlier rulings by lower courts that handed the jail sentences to the Emirati men after they were found guilty of kidnap, theft and impersonating policemen.

Official court documents stated that the defendants stopped the men on the roads in Ajman after showing them ID cards which indicated that they were CID officers. The men then forced the victims into the car of the first defendant and drove them away to a remote desert area from where they beat them up.

The victims told prosecutors that after detaining them for hours, the defendants took all their belongings including the money they had and their mobile phones. They then left them there.

The victims had to walk for a long distance until they found someone who gave them a lift to the main road. They filed a police complaint and the three men were arrested. Police paraded the trio along with other culprits and the victims were able to identify them from the group. The men admitted to carrying out the crimes during interrogations.

The public prosecutors had charged the three Emirati men with impersonating as policemen, kidnap and theft.

The officers also demanded that the men be punished in accordance with the provisions of the Islamic Sharia and the Penal Code.

Both the Ajman Criminal Court of First Instance and the Appeal Court sentenced each of the defendants to five years in jail after they were found guilty on all counts.

The men challenged the ruling to UAE's top court denying the charges and stating that they were wrongly convicted.

The Supreme Court, however, rejected their appeal and maintained verdicts by the first courts basing on the men's earlier confessions at police and evidence presented by prosecutors.

The first defendant had claimed that he suffered from epilepsy and requested for acquittal, but medical tests confirmed that he was a drug addict at the time he committed the crimes.

ismail@khaleejtimes.com

• Abu Dhabi