Woman jailed, fined for stealing Dhs20 from a mosque in Dubai

Mohammed Yaseen, Staff Reporter

The Dubai Court of Appeal revoked a judgment issued by the Misdemeanors Court that fined a woman Dhs1,000 to be followed by deportation for stealing Dhs20 from a donation box in a mosque in the Al Nahda area.

The Court of Appeal sentenced the convict to one month in prison, while decreased the fine to Dhs20 and upheld the deportation term.

The incident took place last August, as an Arab woman filed a report stating that she saw the convict stealing money from the donation box.

She explained that she had seen the convict stealing money from the donation box inside the mosque with plastic tongs.

She continued to monitor the convict, who left the mosque as soon as she picked the money from the box, so she informed the Imam of the mosque of the incident.

The next day, the Imam contacted the woman and asked her to come to the mosque, where he asked her to watch a video clip of a woman stealing Dhs20 in the same manner. She confirmed that she was the same woman whom she saw doing that.

Accordingly, the woman was arrested and interrogated.

A police officer testified that the convict confessed during the interrogation that on the date of the incident, she went to a mosque in Al Nahda area. She took advantage of the mosque's absence of worshipers, so she inserted plastic tongs through the hole at the top of the donation box, picked up Dhs20 from the box and then left the place.

The Court found her guilty and issued the aforementioned judgment.