Karabus 'free tomorrow'

Professor Cyril Karabus has been told he will probably fly home tomorrow from Abu Dhabi, after an eight-month ordeal facing murder charges.

His Cape-Town-based lawyer and friend Michael Bagraim said prosecutors had informed the Abu Dhabi defence team yesterday that they intended to start and finish the appeal against his acquittal tomorrow. Karabus's defence attorneys in Abu Dhabi understood this to mean he would be a free man.

"If they want the appeal . finished in a day, it is our attorneys' strong opinion that he will be home on Wednesday," said Bagraim.

"We have been advised by the attorneys that there is no strength to the prosecution's appeal at all."

He said: "Karabus was very excited yesterday as he saw this as the strongest indication that he would be coming home."

Unlike in South Africa, 90% of cases in the United Arab Emirates were appealed, Bagraim said.

Karabus was acquitted of murder on March 23 but the prosecutors appealed the judgment.

The retired doctor had been found guilty in absentia in 2003 of the murder of a three-year-old girl, who died of leukaemia.

Last week, the SA Medical Association and the Health Professions Council of SA called for a boycott of a coming health exhibition in Johannesburg because of the organisers' alleged links with the UAE.