The United Arab Emirates international football player Abdullah Qassem has been jailed for three months for insulting the UAE national team's coach, Mahdi Ali, in a video, according to The National .
The footballer, who was suspended from the Emirati Al Dhafra football club after the video was posted in August, insulted the coach because he didn't select him to be a part of the UAE national team during a match.
He appeared in the video, which went viral on social media, shirtless and spitting and making gestures that were considered offensive not just to Ali but to the general public because they compromised societal, Islamic and ethical values.
The 29-year-old and his partner in crime, a colleague who shot the video, were both charged with using telecommunications services to offend and hurt the feelings of others, and breaching public ethics through displaying a recorded video on the internet.
In addition, the Abu Dhabi Court of Misdemeanors ordered the video to be removed from the website that published it but found its owner, who was considered a co-conspirator in the crime, not guilty.
The website's owner was accused of using information technology methods to edit the recorded video for defamation purposes, and of using the Internet to publish the defamed person’s photo illegally.
In his defense, Qassem's lawyer Mohammed Al-Marzooqi claimed that the video was shot in the player's dressing room and that it was posted online without his consent, which is a required condition in the application of the UAE's cyber-crime laws.
Al-Marzooqi also claimed that charges could not be pressed if the insulted party didn't press charges, which Ali did not, as it was the UAE's public prosecution who ordered the arrests for breaching public morality after many expressed their disdain.