By Salam Al Amir www.thenational.ae
DUBAI // A businessman was acquitted today of threatening to blow up the Burj Khalifa unless he was paid a million dollars.
J F, 38, from India, used another man’s mobile phone to send the threat by text to a police officer, in an effort to have the other man arrested and jailed, Dubai Criminal Court was told.
He was caught when he boasted about what he had done to a hotel nightclub barman, who reported the boast to the victim.
The bomb threat was made on February 5, 2011. “I received the text message at about 4pm, in very bad English, stating that someone intended to blow up the tower if he was not paid $1m,” the police officer who received it told prosecutors.
Police arrested the man from whose mobile phone J F had sent the message, identified in court records only as Chaudary.
The barman told prosecutors J F and Chaudary often visited the nightclub together. Chaudary suddenly stopped coming, and one of his relatives told the barman he had been arrested.
J F also told the barman Chaudary was in jail, and would never be let out. More info
