Dubai - A Filipino is facing jail and deportation from Dubai after he was charged with breaching public decency for pasting a lewd sticker on his car windshield, a newspaper reported on Monday. The 30-year-old Filipino computer programmer was embroiled in a series of court cases in which a small fine slapped on him by a local court was overturned in favour of a one-month jail sentence and deportation.
Now, the final verdict will be decided by Dubai's court of appeal, the local Gulf news said.
At the centre of the dispute is a "kiss my ass" sticker, which the Filipino pasted on his vehicle windshield.
His lawyer, Riad al-Kabban from the al-Kabban Advocates and Legal Consultants argued in a Court of Cassation hearing against the court of appeal's interpretation of the meaning of the sticker.
"The Appeals Court considered that 'ass' meant 'posterior' and tried our client as if he committed a lewd act in public without supplying any translation. Meanwhile, the word 'ass' has different meanings, according to English dictionaries, such as donkey, dumb, stubborn or to ridicule someone," al-Kabban maintained.
"Al Mawrid English-Arabic Dictionary lists the same definitions. The Appeals Court also failed to ask the suspect whether he understood the sticker's meaning," the lawyer argued.
The defendant refused to remove the controversial sticker after he was reported to the police by an Arab witness who spotted the sticker on the suspect's car in a gas station.
