DUBAI – A flight attendant was given six-month imprisonment on Sunday by the Court of First Instance for molesting a woman friend.

The court panel presided by Judge Fahmi Mounir Fahmi also ordered the 29-year-old Tunisian’s deportation after serving his jail term.

The defendant was originally charged with rape but the court modified it to forcible molestation.

According to the case, the flight attendant “raped” a compatriot friend as she was drunk on July 6 last year.

The woman, 22, alleged in her police complaint that the defendant and two of his friends (one fugitive) raped her. During trial, defence lawyer Saeed Al Guilani argued that the complainant went willingly to the house of the defendant’s friend at a late hour that night.

“Why would a woman go by herself to a place where there are only men?”

He added that all circumstances that night indicated that the alleged victim was enjoying her time.

“She consumed liquor and went inside the house to change her clothes to feel more relaxed,” Al Guilani told the court.

He then requested the court to modify the charge from rape to consensual sex.

The lab report from the General Directorate of Criminal Evidence and Crime Scientology showed that the DNA of the semen traces found in the complainant matched with the defendant’s and did not match with the other person mentioned in her complaint.

The woman reported the incident to the police a day later as she was confused and did not know what to do. She complained at the Muraqqabat police post when her colleagues at work advised her to do so.

She told the police that three compatriot men had molested and raped her. The police managed to arrest only two of them while the third man had left the country.

The arrested duo said they were in the company of the woman in an apartment of one of them. They denied, however, having had sex with her.

The woman told the prosecutors that the defendant and another man were her friends while the man who had left the UAE was an acquaintance.

She said that on that night, the defendant, who was her friend, called her and invited her to a party.

He and two other men picked her up from her house near Clock Tower in Deira around midnight.

They took her to the apartment of the second man where she stayed for three hours.

She changed her clothes into ones she found there to feel more comfortable. Then, she said, the three men took turns in having sex with her, against her will.

She could not resist because she was drunk. She cried hysterically.

Once done, the defendant and the runaway walked out to their car while the second man helped her pick up her stuff.

They dropped her at her place. She was in a hysterical state and could not stop crying. She reported the incident the following day.

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