Man jailed for blackmailing air hostess with photos

dubai — A clerk, who blackmailed and threatened to defame an air hostess by sending her private photos to her exhusband as well as boss if she did not help him get a job at the airlines company where she worked, was sentenced to three months in jail to be followed by deportation.

The 30-year-old Egyptian man was also accused in the Court of First Instance of insulting his countrywoman in text messages.

He denied the charges earlier in the court claiming the woman owed him a large amount of money, which she failed to pay him back.

The complainant, 33, said she met the defendant at a telecommunication company branch where he worked in November 2016. They became friends and she introduced him to her son and group of friends. When she did not accept his marriage proposal, he began stalking her.

He replaced her email address with his own address at the telecom provider and justified it by saying that he wanted to check whether she was overcharged.

He would drive wherever she might be and follow her around her place. When he lost his job in May 2017, he asked her to get him a job at her workplace. After she broke up with him and blocked him on WhatsApp, he started to harass her with calls. He told her he had hacked her phone and obtained her private photos and threatened he would send them to her ex-husband and superiors at the airlines.

“On July 6, 2017, he sent me a message that he would get me to lose my job after disgracing me among my family members and among the directors where I worked.

“He blackmailed me and threatened to misuse his photos with my son to damage my reputation unless I got him the job he wanted. After I had a mental breakdown, I complained against him at Al Rafaa police station,” she said.

He kept harassing her later to drop the complaint. She discovered then that he had stolen her cheques from her car when he was replacing a flat tyre. She reported him for that to Sharjah public prosecution.

A 35-year-old Egyptian man said the defendant claimed in front of him at a café in July last year that he was tempted by the devil when he stole the woman’s cheques.