UAE court punishes Pakistani on spying charge
ABU DHABI, Sept 11: A top Emirati court on Wednesday jailed a Pakistani man for three years for spying for a foreign country, the official WAM news agency said.
The Federal Supreme Court ruled that the Pakistani, who worked as a “driver at a sensitive government department,” had been recruited by an intelligence officer at a foreign embassy in the United Arab Emirates.
The man supplied photographs of meetings in the Gulf country between UAE officials and foreign delegates.
The Pakistani had confessed to having received 30,000 dirhams (more than $8,000) from the officer whom he met several times at the embassy headquarters and at an Iranian hospital in Dubai.
WAM did not specify the country for which the defendant was convicted of spying.
The Abu Dhabi court also acquitted a second suspect, an Iranian, on trial for the same offence for lack of evidence.
An Emirati national married to an Iranian woman was sentenced in January to seven years in jail for spying.—AFP