Editor case: Appeal court ruling on October 7

Legal and Court Correspondent

The lawyer of a British editor serving a 10-year imprisonment for killing his wife, asked a court to reduce his client’s jail sentence, yesterday.

He asked the presiding judge to reduce the punishment against his client to the minimum term, which is three months in jail, as per articles 97 and 98 of the Penal Law.

The court is expected to issue a verdict on October 7.

In March, the Dubai Court of First Instance sentenced the journalist, Francis Matthew, aged 62, to 10 years in jail for hitting his wife, 63, with a hammer and causing her death at the couple’s villa in Umm Suqeim, in July 2017. The primary court had modified the prosecutors’ accusation of premeditated murder to beating that led to death, upon finding Mathew accountable for his wife’s demise.

“Prosecutors appealed the 10-year imprisonment and asked the appellate court to stiffen the punishment, after maintaining that my client had intentionally killed his wife. In their written argument, prosecutors did not produce any new evidence or details,” Matthew’s lawyer Ali Abdullah Al Shamsi argued before the Dubai Appeal Court yesterday.