UAE Court Reverses Dh250,000 Fine Order, Woman Accused Of Cybercrime Acquitted On Appeal

A UAE appeal court has cleared a well-known personality of a cybercrime charge, ruling that prosecutors could not prove she was behind the social media account cited as evidence against her.

She and a second man had been convicted by the Federal Court of First Instance and fined Dh250,000 each, after her husband alleged she had contact with the man on Snapchat and an "illicit relationship" with him. Both were charged with inciting and enticing prostitution and immoral acts via social media. The first-instance court had relied on a digital forensics report on chats, messages and recordings extracted from devices, a report submitted by the husband himself.

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On appeal, Ahmed Al Zarooni, advocate and founder of Ahmed Al Zarooni Advocates and Legal Consultants, said the defence team's task was not to re-argue the facts, but to test the evidence. The defence posed three questions: was it technically proven the account belonged to her? Was she its actual user? Was the device it came from in her possession at the time?

Reviewing the file, the appeal court found forensic labs had tried but failed to obtain data identifying who the Snapchat accounts belonged to, and uncovered no evidence linking them to her. It ruled that an account merely appearing under a certain name is not, by itself, proof of ownership without independent technical data conclusively establishing the link.

The court also held that while the husband's statements could ordinarily be relied upon, they were not sufficient on their own in this case, given the dispute over the source and attribution of the digital evidence. It affirmed that digital evidence must be attributable to the defendant with certainty, and that convictions cannot rest on conjecture, with any doubt resolved in the defendant's favour under the presumption of innocence. The Federal Court of Appeal overturned the first-instance judgment and acquitted her of all charges.

The case highlights the growing weight courts place on digital evidence in criminal cases, and the need to prove not just that content exists, but who actually created or controlled the account it came from.

"The goal in criminal defence isn't to hunt for a technicality: it's to test the evidence," Al Zarooni said. "Is this proof certain enough to sustain a conviction, or does it leave a real possibility open? As long as that possibility remains, the presumption of innocence cannot be set aside."

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