DUBAI // A man who tied up his former boss before taking pictures of him naked and stealing more than Dh600,000 from him had his five-year jail term upheld by the Appeals Court today.
MA, 22, from Iran, tricked his way into his former boss's room at the Address Hotel on April 28, 2012 claiming he merely wanted to chat before leaving the country.
Instead he waited for his boss to visit the bathroom before letting his compatriot HA, 20, from Iran, into the room. Together they broke down the toilet door and assaulted the boss with knives, cutting both his hands in the process.
They then tied him up and threatened to kill him before stripping him and taking photographs of him naked, threatening to make the pictures public if he did not give them money.
The boss handed over Dh13,000 in cash and his ATM card and pincode. He also wrote them a cheque for Dh600,000 which one of the men went to cash immediately.
The two men kept guard over the boss until 8am the next morning, when they tied him to the bed and took away his mobile phone. They also fed him seven capsules of an unknown substance before fleeing.
Four hours after the men had left the boss managed to free himself and report his ordeal to police.
When officers arrested the two men there were photographs of the naked boss on their mobile phones.
The Criminal Court sentenced both men to five years in prison to be followed by deportation and the verdict was upheld by the Appeals Court.
salamir@thenational.ae
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PROFILE OF CURE.FIT
Started: July 2016
Founders: Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori
Based: Bangalore, India
Sector: Health & wellness
Size: 500 employees
Investment: $250 million
Investors: Accel, Oaktree Capital (US); Chiratae Ventures, Epiq Capital, Innoven Capital, Kalaari Capital, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Piramal Group’s Anand Piramal, Pratithi Investment Trust, Ratan Tata (India); and Unilever Ventures (Unilever’s global venture capital arm)
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Family reunited
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was born and raised in Tehran and studied English literature before working as a translator in the relief effort for the Japanese International Co-operation Agency in 2003.
She moved to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies before moving to the World Health Organisation as a communications officer.
She came to the UK in 2007 after securing a scholarship at London Metropolitan University to study a master's in communication management and met her future husband through mutual friends a month later.
The couple were married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter was born in June 2014.
She was held in her native country a year later.
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