Appeal keeps Karabus in UAE
DR Cyril Karabus will spend his 78th birthday tomorrow in the United Arab Emirates. The ailing doctor’s hopes of being back home with his family in Cape Town were dashed this week when a UAE prosecutor lodged an appeal against the oncologist ’ s acquittal on a manslaughter charge.
The matter will go before court on April 9.
A UAE court found Karabus not guilty last Thursday.
His Cape Town-based lawyer, Michael Bagraim, said news of the appeal left the family “reeling in shock”.
“We had no idea that this would even be considered because they [the prosecution] hadn’t raised the issue at court. The prosecution hadn’t queried any findings of the judge in court.”
He said he suspected that the appeal would be heard on another date if it was granted by the judge on April 9.
Bagraim said Karabus’s son and daughter had flown to South Africa from Canada and Britain respectively in the expectation that he would be home for Easter.
He has three other children living in South Africa.
Bagraim said: “It’s obviously taken the wind out of our sails. It’s hit home that he’s not going to be here. We got ourselves very excited and are now desperately let down.”
And Karabus was very depressed, Bagraim said. “When I spoke to him on the phone, his answers were monosyllabic. Obviously, it’s got to him and he just wants to be with his thoughts for a while.”
Said Bagraim: “I don’t believe there are any grounds of any nature whatsoever for an appeal. I think because they have a right [to appeal], they are exercising this right.”
Karabus has been in the UAE since August last year after being detained in connection with the death of a young cancer patient a decade ago. He was arrested while in transit in Dubai.
His wife, Jenifer, who spoke to him on Friday, said Karabus was despondent and “did not know where to turn ”.
She said his friends would probably take him out to dinner or cook dinner for him in his flat for his birthday.