Lankan sentenced to Death

Daily Mirror

The Court of Appeal in Dubai has quashed a life term and awarded death to a man convicted for premeditated murder. The Presiding Judge, Eissa Sharif, gave the 24-year-old Sri Lankan resident capital punishment for killing the husband of his lover.

The Court of First Instance had on April 5 pronounced him guilty of killing the victim, also Sri Lankan, and sentenced him to life term, and deportation thereafter. The defendant, who had an affair with the victim's wife, is believed to have planned the murder as the husband was an 'obstacle' to his love life.

He killed the husband on the night of February 26 last year by stabbing him several times in many parts of the body. The deceased's wife was referred to the Court of Misdemeanours on the charge of having illicit sex.

A police lieutenant told the prosecutors that he saw the victim lying in a pool of blood that night in an alley in Raffa. The police quizzed the wife who was still there at the time the cops arrived. "At first, she claimed that an African man had stabbed her husband while they were walking home," the lieutenant said.

But, the woman soon changed her statement and said that the defendant, with whom she had an affair and who worked at the same place as she, had stabbed her husband, the reason being jealousy. The police nabbed the defendant later in the house of a woman compatriot in the Springs community.

A taxi driver, who happened to be at the crime scene that night said during the investigation that while he was on duty picking up and dropping people in Al Jaffiliya area, he saw two men fighting and a woman screaming.

"One of them stabbed the other several times until he fell down. The other man kept on stabbing him in the chest before fleeing the scene," the driver testified.