ABU DHABI // A Filipina maid given the death penalty for killing her Emirati employer in Al Ain will appeal against her sentence with the help of her country’s embassy, senior diplomats said on Monday.
Officials at Manila’s department of foreign affairs and the Philippine embassy in Abu Dhabi have identified her as Jennifer Dalquez of General Santos City in the southern Philippines.
The 28-year-old claimed to have stabbed her employer in self-defence because he tried to rape her on December 7.
On May 20, Dalquez was sentenced to death by an Al Ain court, said Grace Princesa, Philippine ambassador to the UAE.
“We respect the judicial system of the UAE and have full faith in it,” Ms Princesa said. “We are now waiting for a copy of the verdict and will meet with the lawyer to decide the way forward.”
Overseas Filipino workers who find themselves on the wrong side of the law are helped through the Philippine government's legal assistance fund.
Priority is usually given to the payment of lawyers to represent those accused of serious crimes or who are facing the death penalty.
“The embassy has extended all necessary assistance to Dalquez, including hiring a lawyer,” said Charles Jose, spokesman for the department of foreign affairs in Manila.
“They will assist her in appealing her sentence and her family has been informed of these developments.”
Ms Princesa, who met with the mother of two in prison last week, confirmed that a lawyer had been hired.
“She was arrested on December 12, five days after it happened,” she said.
“Since learning about her case we’ve provided her a lawyer, while our embassy officials have visited her in jail and attended the court hearings.”
Prosecutors allowed the ambassador to meet with Dalquez privately on May 19, apart from the regular diplomatic visits scheduled each Wednesday.
“The meeting lasted for more than an hour,” Ms Princesa said. “She told me that she killed him in self-defence.”
In General Santos City, Dalquez’s mother, Rahima, told a local television network that her daughter stabbed the man using the same knife he had pointed at her.
Dalquez had worked in the UAE since 2011. She was due to return home in January.
She joins 88 other Filipino workers who are on death row in China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and other countries.
rruiz@thenational.ae