An Abu Dhabi resident will pay a fine for slander and libel on the Internet.

The Abu Dhabi Family, Civil and Administrative Court ordered a man who published insulting and defamatory posts on social media to pay a fine of 3,000 dirhams.

The court also ordered him to remove the comments from two websites. The parties will pay court costs jointly. Initially, the commercial company – the plaintiff – demanded 100 thousand dirhams from him as compensation for moral damage.

As it is said in the materials of the case, the client was sued by a company producing kitchens, which performed the work on the order of the defendant’s wife. The company considered that they have executed the contract in full and then found insulting comments on the Internet.

In early January, an Internet blogger, a citizen of a Gulf country, was convicted in Dubai for publicly insulting a hospital in the social network Instagram. The defendant will pay a fine of 5 thousand dirhams. She was also ordered to remove the video containing offensive language.

The Influencer’s indignation was caused by what she saw as the unprofessional treatment of her mother, who was hospitalized in the hospital. When questioned by prosecutors, she denied the charges, saying she had simply posted about the incident with her mother, which the hospital took as an insult.

Earlier, a 20-year-old Arab girl in Dubai was sentenced to a fine of 5,000 dirhams (US$1,370) for insulting doctors at a cosmetology clinic on Instagram.

According to the investigation, the girl had a cosmetic procedure at the clinic, but was dissatisfied with the results. She expressed her dissatisfaction in her Instagram account, where she insulted both the clinic and the doctor, which is prosecuted in the UAE under the law on cybercrime.

Investigators noted that UAE residents should not express their negative opinion in public – in case of complaints against doctors, they should contact consumer protection services or relevant official bodies.

According to Federal Law 5 of 2012, defamation expressed publicly, including on social networks and messengers, is punishable by imprisonment and/or a fine of Dh250,000 to Dh500,000 in the UAE and is a cybercrime.