DUBAI: A labourer who filmed a bathing workmate and threatened to publicise the videos unless he surrendered to a sexual affair must serve his punishment, a jury ruled.

The Asian labourer, 31, breached the modesty of the Pakistani victim, 31, who was bathing inside the washroom of a labourers’ accommodation in Jebel Ali in May 2016, records read.

He peeped at him, and used a mobile phone to assault his privacy by filming him. He misused Facebook to send him a message threatening to publicise the indecent videos unless he accepted to sleep with him.

At the Dubai Criminal Court he acknowledged having filmed the workmate using his mobile but argued that, “I never threatened him nor asked him for an affair.”  The court imprisoned him for six months.

It also ordered he be deported after serving the term. At the Appeals Court on Dec.6 he asked for leniency. However, the Appeals Court has trashed his plea and ordered that his mobile be confiscated.

As in the Jebel Ali Police Station records, the workmate received a Facebook message on May 30 from an unknown sender. He opened it and saw one of the videos showing him bathing, coupled with a request to accept kisses.

“I corresponded with the sender. He set an appointment to find him at a supermarket in the Dubai Investment Park. I went to the scene” and looked around for him, the workmate explained.

“He turned out to be the labourer. I saw him calling upon me while gesturing with his hand that he was the one I was looking for. Upon meeting him, he notified me that he wanted to sleep with me.”

During prosecution interrogations the labourer confessed and explained that the workmate was bathing when he stealthily recorded him using his mobile. He made several clips of him in the buff.

He established a Facebook account with a false name, from which he sent the indecent clips to the workmate’s account with a message threatening to make them public unless he became his partner.