A National Service recruit who posed as a woman on social media, solicited explicit images from a teenage boy and then blackmailed him into having sex with him had his jail term slashed to a quarter of the original sentence.
Dubai Criminal Court was told that the 23-year-old Emirati man contacted his 16-year-old compatriot on Facebook Messenger App five years ago, introducing himself as a woman named Hamda.
The victim said they would send each other pictures but Hamda began demanding he send her photos of himself naked. He said she threatened to tell her brother he was harassing her if he refused.
"I sent her some of the pictures she requested then sometime in 2017 the defendant contacted me as himself and told me he knew about the pictures I was sharing with Hamda and that he could help me obtain her phone in return for Dh7,000," said the teenager.
The defendant contacted the boy again and said he had paid Hamda the amount and took her phone and broke it after deleting the pictures.
"Following this, we became friends and he and I often went out together," said the boy.
On April 25, last year, he said he received a call from the defendant telling him he did not delete the pictures and that he would use them to defame him if he did not have sex with him.
The two met that day and, while in the defendant's car, the teenager said he was sexually assaulted by the man.
Court records did not reveal who reported the incident to police.
The defendant denied charges of sexual assault and issuing threats in both criminal and appeal courts.
In November, Dubai Criminal Court sentenced the man to two years in jail but on Wednesday, the appeals court reduced his sentence to six months in prison.
The reason why the sentence was reduced was not disclosed in court records.