Court Acquits Woman in Cybercrime Case, Flags Malicious Prosecution, Evidence Flaws

A Dubai Misdemeanour court has cleared an Arab woman of charges linked to possessing and storing pornographic material using information technology, ruling that the case lacked both legal and evidentiary basis and was built on flawed and unlawfully obtained evidence.

According to court records, the alleged incidents occurred within the jurisdiction of Al Barsha Police Station in October 2025.

The woman had been referred to trial following a complaint filed by her former husband, who alleged that she stored explicit content with the intent to display it to others, in breach of the UAE’s cybercrime law.

According to the forensic report, which examined the complainant’s mobile phone, investigators extracted ten video clips and twenty-two images deemed offensive to public morals. The materials included footage showing unidentified individuals engaged in explicit conduct, including indecent acts recorded on camera.

In its ruling, the court held that the prosecution’s case relied on contradictory forensic findings and failed to establish either the material element of the offence or the requisite criminal intent. It also ordered the deletion of all images and video clips forming the subject of the case, dismissed a related civil compensation claim after the complainant failed to pay prescribed court fees, and directed him to bear legal costs.


The defence successfully argued that the woman was the target of a deliberate and malicious scheme involving hacking, unlawful surveillance and extortion.

A key issue in the case was a major discrepancy in forensic reports. While the prosecution claimed that incriminating material had been found on the woman’s phone, technical findings confirmed that her device remained locked and inaccessible to forensic experts, meaning no data was extracted from it.

Instead, the evidence — comprising multiple videos and images — was recovered from the complainant’s own phone. The defence showed that these materials were wrongly attributed to the woman due to a clerical error in the electronic case file, where reports from two separate devices were placed consecutively, creating a misleading narrative.

The court accepted that this error fatally weakened the prosecution’s case and confirmed there was no proof that the woman had stored or possessed the material on her device, or that she had shared or intended to share it.


Further evidence presented during the trial revealed that the complainant had unlawfully accessed the woman’s private cloud account without her knowledge or consent. During investigations, he admitted to infiltrating her iCloud account to obtain personal photos and videos.

Case records showed that the ex-husband then threatened to circulate these private materials to her relatives and family members.

According to the legal memorandum, his actions were driven by blackmail and financial extortion. He sent threats via WhatsApp in an attempt to coerce the woman into transferring ownership of multiple properties and assets to him.

Documents submitted before the court stated that he sought to exploit the risk of reputational damage within her family as leverage to force her into surrendering her wealth.

It was also established that the complainant had installed recording and eavesdropping devices inside the woman’s private car without her consent, as part of a wider pattern of unlawful surveillance and privacy violations.

The defence described the case as “malicious and fabricated”, arguing that the complainant had initiated proceedings to conceal his own alleged criminal acts and to exert pressure on the woman during their personal dispute. It maintained that the evidence was obtained through illegal means, rendering it legally inadmissible.


The court ruled that there was no evidence to support the claim that the woman intended to display the materials to others — a key requirement for conviction under the cybercrime law — noting that the only person who brought the material into circulation was the complainant himself.

Following the acquittal, the defence formally requested that the case be referred to the Public Prosecution to investigate the complainant for alleged hacking, extortion, misuse of telecommunications, and providing false testimony.

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