DUBAI // Two policemen beat a man so viciously his teeth fell out, a court heard yesterday.
The pair arrested the man in a hypermarket and dragged him outside before beating him to the ground and punching him repeatedly in the face. As they were driving him to the police station they stopped for petrol and resumed beating him and spat upon him, prosecutors told the Criminal Court.
“I think he was wearing a ring because it hurt badly and then I bled,” recalled the man M A, 45, from Egypt.
He was arrested on October 14 last year after the police tracked him down for allegedly writing a dud cheque. He was in the hypermarket in his apartment building shopping for groceries when the two officers K A, 27, an Emirati, and M T, 47, holding a Comoros Islands passport, approached.
“He showed me his police ID and asked me to accompany him. I said: ‘Fine but just let me take these food items and give them to my wife’,” recalled the man.
As soon as they were outside, the Emirati officer twisted his arm and pushed him to the ground and started beating him.
“I was asking for the reasons of my arrest but instead of an answer, I was punched 20 times in a row by K A on my left eye and mouth. I told him I recently had surgery on my eye so he stopped punching me.”
His nose began bleeding and a crowd began to gather. His wife K G, 29, from Morocco, saw some of the attack.
“My husband called me and said police were taking him away, so I rushed to him and saw the two men dragging him into the car,” she recalled. “I heard one of the two men saying to my husband ‘I will show your mother’.”
The man said the officers stopped at a petrol station and continued beating him. They also bit and spat on him. “My upper teeth fell out because of the assault and I suffered swelling in my left eye, bruises to my face and a bite mark in my chest,” said the man.
When they arrived at the Naif Police Station he was informed he was wanted for writing a dud cheque of Dh20,000.
A medical report confirmed the man had been severely beaten and that this had caused his teeth to fall out.
In court both policemen denied charges of assault, saying they were merely following orders to make an arrest.
The next hearing was scheduled for October 6.
salamir@thenational.ae
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