Court orders fresh trial of journalist who killed wife

15-year term overturned after lawyer argues appellate judgement full of contradictions

Legal and Court Correspondent

Dubai’s highest court yesterday overturned a British editor’s 15-year imprisonment for killing his wife and ordered a fresh trial.

In October, the Dubai Appeal Court overturned the 10year imprisonment against Francis Matthew, 62, and raised his punishment to 15 years in jail, after he was found to have premeditatedly murdered his 63-year-old compatriot wife in the couple’s villa in Umm Suqeim in July 2017.

In March, the Court of First Instance had sentenced Matthew to 10 years in jail.

Yesterday, Matthew’s lawyer Ali Abdullah Al Shamsi argued before the Dubai Cassation Court that his client did not, premeditatedly or intentionally, murder his wife but struck her with a hammer in a ‘fit of sudden anger’.

“The appellate judgement was full of contradictions and inconsistencies and the Appeal Court did not substantiate the proper evidence and reasoning on which it deemed that the defendant had intended to kill his wife. He had made enough arrangements with the victim to travel on their summer holiday to attend their son’s graduation,” lawyer Al Shamsi argued before presiding judge Abdul Aziz Abdullah.

Presiding judge Abdullah accepted the appeal of Matthew, a former Gulf News staff, and referred the case back to the Appeal Court for a new panel of judges to hold a fresh trial.