DUBAI // A taxi driver was sentenced to five years in prison today for raping a British woman.
The driver, SG, 47, had denied the charges at the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance, saying the victim was drunk and offered herself to him after getting locked outside her parents' house without money for taxi fare.
Prosecutors said SG raped the woman in the backseat of a Dubai Transport taxi on March 5, 2010, last year in the Springs gated community.
The complaint was reported to Jebel Ali police at 5am on the day of the incident. A police officer testified that when he arrived, he found the woman with her parents in a distraught and drunken state.
The victim, according to the officers, did not have any physical signs of assault but was disheveled, with trousers worn inside-out.
She told police she had caught a taxi at Chi nightclub. She said that when she arrived at her parents' house, she asked the driver to wait while she went to collect money, but the door was locked.
After numerous attempts at ringing the bell, the woman returned to the taxi and used the driver's mobile to call her mother.
She testified she finally told him to come back in the morning to collect his fare, but he jumped into the backseat and raped her.
Her mother told prosecutors that she woke up to a commotion outside her house and found her daughter banging on the door asking her to call 999.
The mother, 61-year-old FS, told prosecutors her daughter told her she had fought off the taxi driver, scratching his face.
Police officers said the driver was arrested after the community's security guard provided them with the taxi plate number. But officers testified there were
no visible signs of a struggle on his face or hands.
However evidence from the backseat of the taxi and the victim's clothes showed genetic material from SG.
SG will be deported after serving his jail term, the court said.
salamir@thenational.ae
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Multitasking pays off for money goals
Tackling money goals one at a time cost financial literacy expert Barbara O'Neill at least $1 million.
That's how much Ms O'Neill, a distinguished professor at Rutgers University in the US, figures she lost by starting saving for retirement only after she had created an emergency fund, bought a car with cash and purchased a home.
"I tell students that eventually, 30 years later, I hit the million-dollar mark, but I could've had $2 million," Ms O'Neill says.
Too often, financial experts say, people want to attack their money goals one at a time: "As soon as I pay off my credit card debt, then I'll start saving for a home," or, "As soon as I pay off my student loan debt, then I'll start saving for retirement"."
People do not realise how costly the words "as soon as" can be. Paying off debt is a worthy goal, but it should not come at the expense of other goals, particularly saving for retirement. The sooner money is contributed, the longer it can benefit from compounded returns. Compounded returns are when your investment gains earn their own gains, which can dramatically increase your balances over time.
"By putting off saving for the future, you are really inhibiting yourself from benefiting from that wonderful magic," says Kimberly Zimmerman Rand , an accredited financial counsellor and principal at Dragonfly Financial Solutions in Boston. "If you can start saving today ... you are going to have a lot more five years from now than if you decide to pay off debt for three years and start saving in year four."
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The biog
Family: wife, four children, 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren
Reads: Newspapers, historical, religious books and biographies
Education: High school in Thatta, a city now in Pakistan
Regrets: Not completing college in Karachi when universities were shut down following protests by freedom fighters for the British to quit India
Happiness: Work on creative ideas, you will also need ideals to make people happy
Quick facts on cancer
- Cancer is the second-leading cause of death worldwide, after cardiovascular diseases
- About one in five men and one in six women will develop cancer in their lifetime
- By 2040, global cancer cases are on track to reach 30 million
- 70 per cent of cancer deaths occur in low and middle-income countries
- This rate is expected to increase to 75 per cent by 2030
- At least one third of common cancers are preventable
- Genetic mutations play a role in 5 per cent to 10 per cent of cancers
- Up to 3.7 million lives could be saved annually by implementing the right health
strategies
- The total annual economic cost of cancer is $1.16 trillion
