According to Gulf News, seven prisoners lost their appeals at Dubai's Appeal Court and will serve their initial jail terms for sneaking into the cell of another inmate and gang-raping him twice in Dubai Central Jail.
Local media reports that in January, on two separate occasions, six Emiratis and one prisoner from Comoros Islands gang-raped a 24-year-old fellow Emirati inmate.
The 24-year-old victim told the presiding judge that he was sleeping one night when a group of four prisoners entered his cell, woke him up, and gang-raped him.
After the first gang-rape occurred, the inmate had hoped to report the incident to the prison management but "backed out in the last minute".
A few days after the first incident, the second group of prisoners walked into his cell and also gang-raped the Emirati. This time, however, he complained to the management who took immediate action.
"They gave me a choice to be beaten or allow them to have sex with me … I felt scared and allowed them to have sex with me. I went to complain but then I decided not to because I was afraid that the defendants might beat me. Two days later, three more convicts came and did the same … then I reported the matter to the jail’s management,” the victim said, according to Gulf News.
The seven rapists are aged between 19 and 22.
Presiding judge Saeed Salem Bin Sarm upheld the primary ruling from May 2016, which saw the first batch of perpetrators sentenced to three years in prison and the second batch of rapists were jailed for one year each.
After completion of the sentence, the accused from Comoros Islands will be deported.