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Death penalty for killing estranged fiancée upheld

The Al Ain Court of Appeal last week upheld the death penalty awarded to a 26-year-old Arab man for the premeditated murder of her 21-year-old estranged fiancée.

The court, however, acquitted him of raping the victim.

The defendant muffled her by wrapping and then taping her headscarf around her face with an adhesive tape and watched her go motionless before digging a grave and burying the body in a sandy area on the outskirts of the city, a report carried by an Arabic daily said.

The incident happened in mid-June last year. The woman’s father informed the police that his daughter, who left home around 9am to see T.G., with whom she was engaged but had broken off, had gone missing. The police summoned T.G., who initially denied knowing her whereabouts but later confessed, after being confronted with the pieces of evidence, that he had killed her.

The evidence showed that there was continuous phone contact between the two on the day she went absent and that the contact was around the same area.

During interrogation, T.G. re-enacted how he wrapped her headscarf around her face and taped it with an adhesive tape from top of the head to the chin until she became motionless.

“I left her for ten minutes and sat next to her until I was sure that she was not moving anymore. Later, I buried her under the sand and left the place,” he told the police. Officers dug out her decomposed body from the scene. The Court of First Instance took up the case on September 20 last year and heard the case till October 12 last year.

The victim’s father told the prosecution that he had informed the police about the absence of his daughter. Her sister told the interrogators about a dispute between her sister and the defendant. The court also listened to the statement of the forensic doctor before it adjourned the hearing to October 23.

However, the court decided to hold a retrial to examine the stand of the blood heirs and whether it was a case of premeditated murder or manslaughter. It finally sentenced T.G. to capital punishment on December 26 last year.

He challenged the verdict, and the appellate court on Tuesday upheld the death penalty awarded to him. — news@khaleejtimes.com