DUBAI: The Dubai Criminal Court yesterday referred the man who allegedly raped and killed a four-year-old boy in a mosque’s bathroom for psychiatric evaluation.
During the third hearing of the case the defense lawyer argued that his client, known publicly as “RR,” was mentally unstable and had suffered child abuse.
The accused is a convicted sex offender who was last year released from prison after serving a sentence for raping a minor.
The accused, a 30-year-old Emirati fisherman, had on the first day of Eid Al-Adha allegedly lured the child to the mosque with the promise of giving him Eidiya, a gift of money.
He then allegedly took the child to the mosque’s bathroom and raped him. Fearing that the boy’s screams would alert people, the accused who was drunk, then tried to muffle him while bashing his head on the floor several times until he died.
Defense lawyer Mohammad Al-Saadi told the court that the accused was tortured as a child by his stepmother.
Al-Saadi had earlier volunteered to defend RR after the lawyer assigned by the court refused to represent him, calling him an “embarrassment to humanity.”
Al-Saadi argued that RR’s mother had died soon after he was born in Bahrain.
“His father then brought him to the UAE and married an Indian woman whom he had three children with,” said the lawyer.
The stepmother, according to Al-Saadi tortured RR and urged the father to beat him.
“As a result of the torture he started feeling discriminated against and dropped out of school. After his father’s death, when he was 14, the accused joined the army but was sacked a few years later because he never attended work,” Al Saadi said.
He pointed that the policeman who arrested the accused said that he was smiling and acted blasé as if nothing had happened.
“A few hours later on he confessed to committing the crime. I think he is displaying symptoms of somebody who suffers from paranoia,” he said.
The court will reconvene on Jan. 10.
The Dubai Attorney General has asked for the maximum sentence, the death penalty, for the accused. The trial is being held under heavy security amidst public outcry over the shocking killing. Police had searched all the attendees before they entered the chamber fearing for the life of the accused.
