Photo used for illustrative purpose.

The Dubai Criminal Court convicted two Africans and sentenced them to one year in jail, to be followed by deportation after serving their sentences, and fined them Dhs2,000, the amount they stole from a grocery after threatening its owner with a knife and an axe. The Appellate Court upheld the verdict.

The case date back to September 2022, when an Asian national submitted a report complaining that his grocery had been robbed under duress after he had been threatened with death by two people.

He added that he saw the two suspects entering the grocery he owned in the Hor Al Anz area in Dubai on the morning of the incident, where they started wandering around the grocery, as one of them was carrying a plastic bag and the other a black suitcase.

The victim added in the interrogations that one of them approached him and threatened to assault him with a large knife which was hidden inside the plastic bag if he refused to give him the money inside the cash box, while the second threatened him with a large ax.

The victim added that he tried to resist, but one of them threatened him with the knife, while the other opened the cash box and stole Dhs2,000 from inside it, and then fled the place. Later the grocery owner filed the incident to the police.

According to the case file, a Dubai police investigation team identified the two suspects and arrested them in an area close to where the incident happened.

The two suspects confessed in the interrogations that they had connived to rob groceries in the Hor Al Anz area in Dubai, as one of them chose the last grocery, which they raided and stole the money, which we shared.