DUBAI: Although he has denied the charges, an Emirati man is facing court charges in the United Arab Emirates after he reportedly posed as a police officer in January and raped a Filipina clerk. According to a report published by the Khaleej Times on Saturday, the 31-year-old Emirati, pretending to be a cop, threatened to arrest the 29-year-old Filipina for supposedly wearing indecent clothes. A separate report of the news site Gulf News said the accused allegedly claimed that he wanted to take the Filipina to a hospital to check whether she was a transvestite. Court records showed the Emirati met the Filipina woman and her Filipino boyfriend in Al Qusais and showed them a photograph of him wearing the military uniform. The Filipina claimed that the Emirati threatened to take her to the police for wearing a short skirt but drove her instead to the basement of another building where he raped her. The victim said the suspect told her to keep the incident a secret. The complainant's boyfriend said he learned that his girlfriend had been raped only when he was called for testimony at the police station. Court prosecutors charged the man with kidnap, rape, molestation, and impersonation of a police officer. In recent years, women activists have lamented the lenient sentences against rapists, which have often resulted in only two to three year sentences, and also sometimes include the deportation of the woman.
