UAE man sentenced to death for raping, killing child

DUBAI - A Dubai court Wednesday sentenced an Emirati man to death for raping and murdering a four-year-old boy in a Dubai mosque last November, in a case that has appalled the Gulf country.

Dubai’s Court of First Instance ruled that the crime had been premeditated, rejecting the man’s defence that he had been drunk and that he had accidentally smothered the boy to stop him from screaming after raping him in the bathroom of a mosque on the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

“This horrible crime shook Emirati society and runs against all its foundations and values, especially as it occurred on the first day of the Eid holiday,” prosecutor general Essam al-Hamidan said.

The man, a 30-year-old UAE citizen of Bahraini origin, received a separate, six-month jail term for consumption of alcohol.

Prosecutors had presented the court with a confession from the convicted man in which he said he had been drinking heavily before he lured the Pakistani child to the bathroom of a mosque with promises of gifts.

According to his confession, he then sexually assaulted the boy, and accidentally smothered him to death when the child cried.

The victim, four-year-old Moussa Mokhtiar, was found dead in the mosque bathroom later that same morning.