Man threatened to kill ex-girlfriend, court hears

A man accused of threatening on a messager app to kill his former girlfriend denied the charges in court yesterday, saying she was trying to blackmail him.

The Chinese defendant’s lawyer told Dubai Criminal Court that after the couple split, things became bitter and the woman decided to frame his client.

“She took his apartment and gave it away for rent, then his mother’s car, which she also rented and refused to give my client the due sums,” the lawyer said.

“Whenever he called her to demand the money, she threatened to land him in trouble by reporting him to police and accusing him of doing harm to her.

“She then blackmailed him by telling him to stop asking for the money or she would frame him with the police.”

Prosecutors said the defendant, 23, sent a messsage on his iPhone to her mother, in which he was claimed to have written: “If she did not solve this, I will kill her.”

The Chinese woman, 27, told prosecutors she had been in a relationship with the defendant for about two years but broke up with him in January.

“It was then when he started to harass me and in March he asked me to pay him the value of all the gifts that he bought me when we were together,” she said.

“He kept on calling and messaging,” she said, but she did not answer him, and when he came to her Al Rashidiya home she refused to open the door for him. “On May 28 he sent my mother a message threatening to kill me, so I reported him to police.”

Police arrested the man and, during questioning, he denied sending the message. Prosecutors said he had admitted to threatening the woman, although in court he denied doing so.

A report stated the man’s phone was checked and an outgoing message containing death threats was found on it.

“I request that my client’s phone be sent to the forensic lab again, where they should extract the blackmailing messages the woman sent him,” said his lawyer.

A verdict is expected on September 26.