Friends set ablaze Emirati after he died of heroin overdose in Dubai

Dubai - Three vehicles - which happened to be in the area - were damaged in the fire.

Four men stood trial at a Dubai court for setting on fire the body of an Emirati man who died of heroin overdose.
The accused, including an 18-year-old Emirati student and three Comoros Islands passport holders (one of them a 23-year-old policeman), set a car ablaze with the victim's body inside for a cover-up, on December 14 last year in Al Muraqqabat, the Court of First Instance was told.
The car belonged to the victim's mother. Three vehicles - which happened to be in the area - were damaged in the fire.
The four men, including a runaway, who are referred to as a gang, faced charges of hiding a body, arson, damage of private property, and putting others' lives at risk.
The victim's 52-year-old Emirati father said his son had been jailed for taking narcotics and released following a pardon on November 26, last year. "I picked him up from the Dubai Police anti-narcotics department two days later. Few minutes after we reached home, he went out to greet some relatives.
"He came back the next day and then drove his mother's car. He asked for some cash and a SIM card."
The father then advised his son to stay away from bad company and drugs. "Later the same day, he called me asking me to send him a recharge mobile credit immediately. And that was it.
"He disappeared and we never heard from him ever since. On December 13, last year, I received a call from Al Muraqqabat police station to bring my son for the routine check-up."
The father continued to say, "My wife got a call from the police early morning on December 14 that her car was found burned down in the parking lot of a park in Abu Hail. A body was found inside the car."
The father then took a DNA test to see whether the body could be of a relative.
"On December 30, 2017, we learned the body was our son's. The car was worth about Dh60,000," he added.
A police officer said they set up a task force to investigate the incident. We had leads about the involvement of the four men who are on trial. "The Emirati student said he came across the victim in jail and they met again right after their release. He claimed the victim had drugs on him and passed out after injecting himself with heroin in Al Quoz area," the officer said.
They moved the body from the driver's seat to the passenger's seat and then drove the car and left it in Al Hamriyah area. Two days later, they came back and found the car still there and decided to burn it down to cover their crime.
One of the accused claimed to investigators he tried indeed to help the victim and revive him by injecting him with a chemical substance.
The trial will resume on May 20.

mary@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai