UAE sentences Emirati woman to death for killing U.S. teacher

[June 29, 2015]  DUBAI (Reuters) - An Emirati woman was sentenced to death by a United Arab Emirates (UAE) court on Monday for killing an American kindergarten teacher in December, local media and Dubai-based al-Arabiya television reported.

The teacher, identified as Romanian-born Ibolya Ryan, a mother of 11-year-old twins, was stabbed to death in a toilet at an Abu Dhabi shopping mall.

The Arabic language al-Emarat al-Youm newspaper and al-Arabiya television said that the Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi convicted the woman, Ala'a Badr Abdullah al-Hashemi, 30, of the killing and sentenced her to death.

The court's ruling was final and is not subject to appeal.

Hours after killing Ryan, Hashemi had also placed a makeshift bomb outside the front door of an apartment of an Egyptian-American doctor living in the UAE, but the device was safely dismantled.

Arabiya television said the court proceeded with the trial after medical examination had confirmed the woman was aware of her actions and was not suffering from any mental illness.

Police said she had become radicalized over the Internet and had not been targeting an American in particular, but was looking for a foreigner to kill at random.

Attacks on Westerners are rare in the UAE, a wealthy Western-allied oil exporter and tourism hub, but concern has been rising following a spate of attacks in neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Supporters of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria have urged Muslims to target Western expatriates in retaliation for U.S.-led air strikes on its fighters. The UAE has participated in the air campaign and is a strong opponent of a variety of Islamist groups.

Executions are extremely rare in the UAE and it was not immediately clear when Hashemi might be put to death.

(Reporting by Maha El Dahan, Editing by Sami Aboudi and Crispian Balmer)

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