Case Explained: Dubai Court Acquits Woman in Cybercrime Pornography Case, Citing Flawed Evidence – Legal Perspective

According to the forensic report, which examined the complainant’s mobile phone, investigators extracted ten video clips and twenty-two images described as 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 found that the prosecution’s case relied on contradictory forensic evidence and failed to establish either the material element of the crime or the required criminal intent. The court further ordered the deletion of all images and video clips forming the subject of the case, while dismissing a related civil compensation claim after the complainant failed to pay the prescribed court fees, and ordering him to bear the legal costs.

The defence, led by lawyer Mohammed Abdullah Al Redha, successfully argued that the woman was the victim of a deliberate and malicious scheme involving hacking, unlawful surveillance and extortion.

Central to the case was a critical discrepancy in forensic reports. While the prosecution claimed that incriminating material had been found on the woman’s mobile device, technical findings confirmed that her phone remained locked and could not be accessed by forensic experts, meaning no data was ever extracted from it.

Instead, the evidence — consisting of multiple videos and images — was retrieved from the complainant’s own device. The defence demonstrated that these materials were mistakenly attributed to the woman due to a secretarial error in the electronic case file, where reports from two separate devices were placed sequentially, creating a misleading impression.

The court accepted that this error undermined the prosecution’s case and confirmed that there was no proof the woman had stored or possessed the materials on her device, nor that she had shared or intended to share them.

Further evidence presented during the trial revealed that the complainant had illegally accessed the woman’s private cloud account without her knowledge or consent. He admitted during investigations that he had infiltrated her iCloud account to obtain personal images and videos.