Boy testifies in UAE rape case
Taken from Gulf Daily News
8.11.2007
DUBAI: A tearful French teenage boy told a court in Dubai yesterday that three UAE nationals lured him and a friend into their car and gang-raped him at knifepoint in July, his mother said.
Alexandre Robert, 15, told a closed court session that he and the friend were tricked into getting into a SUV by the youngest suspect, an acquaintance of the boys, who offered to drive them home from a shopping mall where they had been playing videogames, Veronique said.
Alexandre, dressed in a black suit, said he was raped by the three men. His friend, 16, was taken away from the car and not assaulted, she said, adding that of one the suspects has Aids.
Alexandre had returned from Switzerland, where his mother lives, to testify in the hearing.
The alleged assailants then dropped off the two boys near a Dubai landmark hotel, the court heard.
Two of the suspects, aged 36 and 18, stood in white prison uniforms flanked by policemen during the hearing. Both men deny the charges.
The third suspect, 17, is being tried in a juvenile court.
A source present at the hearing said one of the defendants angrily protested after the victim's attorney asked for the suspects to be tested for Aids and hepatitis.
The trial, which will resume on November 11, attracted local, French, US and Swiss media.
"I'm not ashamed to tell the truth and only the truth. I feel relieved and angry," Alexandre said outside the court after giving his testimony.
"I see Dubai in another light," she added.
Veronique Robert, a Swiss national, accused the authorities of deliberately not informing the family that one of the suspected rapists tested HIV-positive in 2003, delaying medical attention for her son.
"We needed to start treatment a week after the case, but because the authorities didn't tell us, we weren't able to," she said.
"Aids is a taboo subject here. The government played with the life of my child."
She and her son accused a police forensic doctor of calling the boy a homosexual while examining him after the assaults.
She had said she and her son, who previously attended school in Dubai, where his father works, had left the country in early October because French diplomats told her that her son might be prosecuted for homosexual acts, a crime here.
Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim brushed aside the accusations, but declined to give further comments on the ongoing case.
"This is a court case. I think she is blaming everyone", he said.
Members of the defendants' family were not present at the hearing. The defence lawyer was not available for comment.
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