Dubai jails SA woman for sex, abortion

A South African woman has been jailed for six months in Dubai for having an abortion.

The 25-year-old hotel employee was arrested shortly after she checked into a local hospital, haemorrhaging.

Last week she was sentenced by the Sharjah Criminal Court of First Instance and will be deported to South Africa after serving her prison term.

According to United Arab Emirate-based National newspaper, the woman fell pregnant after spending a night with an American who was a guest at the hotel she worked in.

The woman is said to have aborted her pregnancy in its fourth month by taking pills given to her by a friend.

She was charged with committing zina - a violation of the Sharia law that prohibits sex outside marriage in the emirate, and for aborting the foetus.

The maximum sentence is a five-year jail term and 100 lashes.

The report, said her lawyer, Harun Tahlak, attempted to dismiss the abortion charge by arguing that the court had not been provided with a doctor's examination report as proof of the abortion.

He told the court his client should have been acquitted because the prosecution had failed to prove its case.

The woman's family in South Africa were this week still in shock and declined to comment.

The woman is not the first South African to have transgressed the law in the Islamic emirate.

Others who have been nabbed include:

• Twenty-two-year-old diving instructor Roxanne Hillier, who was jailed in 2009 for three months after being convicted on a sex charge. Hillier, who worked at a dive centre in Khorfakkan in Sharjah, was arrested together with her boss after they apparently had an affair. Despite medical tests which showed no signs of sex, Hillier was found guilty of being alone in the same room with a man, and of having sex out of wedlock; and

• A 39-year-old man identified only as "MV", who was jailed for 10 years in 2008 after he handed over a bag containing cocaine to a policeman at Dubai airport. The man admitted he had intended to smuggle the 4.3kg of cocaine into Switzerland.