On September 22nd, 2022, at approximately 2:30 p.m, residents of the Alcazer residence apartment complex, building D, located in the Al-Nada district of Sharah, United Arab Emirates, called the police.
The reason was a strong persistent odor coming from the sixth floor.
Several neighbors reported that the tenant of apartment 612 had not been seen for more than 4 days.
The door remained closed and the windows were tightly curtained.
The police officers who arrived broke down the front door.
Inside the two- room apartment, they found the body of a young woman in the kitchen.
It was tied to a radiator with plastic clamps.
The victim was half naked with multiple burns on her chest, wrists, and legs.
Her neck was severely constricted with clear signs of strangulation.
There were no signs of a struggle in the room, but food remains.
Two empty syringes, burnt pieces of plastic, and medical bandages were found on the floor.
The Charger Criminal Investigation Department’s investigation team immediately cordoned off the premises.
2 hours later, the body was preliminarily identified as Leah Harper, a 23-year-old British citizen.
She had been living in Dubai on a student visa.
Official identification and notification by the British consulate took place a day later.
The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Interior reported that death had occurred approximately 3 to 5 days before discovery.
The apartment was rented in the name of a man named Khaled Akman who identified himself as a cryptocurrency entrepreneur.
However, an initial check revealed that the passport provided when renting the apartment was fake.
It was registered to a Kuwaiti citizen who had not left the country for more than 6 years.
The biographical data did not match.
The name Khaled Akman wasn’t listed in the database of real entrepreneurs, nor did it have any legal trace in the Emirates or the Persian Gulf countries.
Surveillance cameras in the building recorded the tenants’s last activity on the evening of September 19th.
He left the building with a black backpack, wearing a dark shirt and black sunglasses.
He went on foot heading toward the exit to Alihad Street.
After that, no signals from his devices were recorded.
The phone believed to belong to him was turned off within the next hour.
The following day, the police issued an international request to establish the identity and whereabouts of the suspect.
The investigation opened a criminal case under the article premeditated murder with torture.
British diplomats officially confirmed that Leah Harper was a third-year medical student at the University of Dubai.
Her mother, Sarah Harper, said that Leah had stopped communicating on the evening of September 16th immediately after sending a short voice message.
Her daughter’s phone was turned off a few minutes later.
Until her body was found, Leah was considered missing.
The last person to see her alive was her roommate, who confirmed that on the afternoon of the 16th, Leah was planning to go away for the weekend with a young man she referred to as an entrepreneur from Abu Dhabi.
He did not give his name.
According to the neighbor, the couple met on Instagram about 3 months ago.
Leah’s friends said that the man gave her expensive gifts and paid for trips to restaurants, but none of them had ever met him in person.
The police questioned residents, acquaintances, teachers, and classmates.
All testimonies confirmed that in recent weeks, Leah had often disappeared for the weekend and did not share any details.
She left most of her belongings in the student dormatory and did not officially move out.
According to the university, she had not attended classes since September 18th.
At this stage, the investigation officially recognized Leah Harper’s death as murder and the man who rented the apartment as the prime suspect.
However, it was not possible to establish his true identity during the first days of the investigation.
Initial theories emerged about an international fraud scheme, but there was no direct evidence linking the suspect to previous crimes.
The investigation into the murder of Leah Harper officially began on the morning of September 23rd, 2022.
The first 12 hours after the body was discovered were spent securing the apartment, interviewing neighbors, examining the crime scene, and collecting biological evidence.
The Charger Criminal Investigation Department’s forensic team seized 24 items, including plastic ties, burnt plastic, shoe prints on the balcony, medical bandages, and empty medicine packaging.
Three CCTV cameras installed inside the apartment attracted particular attention.
One was fixed in the hallway, the second above the bedroom door, and the third was aimed at the kitchen where the body was found.
The memory cards were missing from the devices.
Either they had been removed by the killer or the cameras were dummies.
An examination showed that the devices were indeed working, but had been turned off the day after Leah’s last mobile phone signal.
The next step was to establish the identity of the man who rented the apartment, who gave his name as Khaled Akman.
Immediately after confirming that the passport provided was fake, the police began checking digital traces, an official request was submitted to Instagram and WhatsApp, the social media platforms through which the suspect had been in contact with the victim.
From the correspondence recovered by cyber crime experts in Dubai, it emerged that Khaled had met Leah about 3 months earlier at the end of June.
He presented himself as the owner of a cryptocurrency startup living between Abu Dhabi and London.
His profile was professionally designed, photos of cars, offices, yachts, and meetings with alleged partners.
He had more than 50,000 followers, comments from bots, and pinned stories with business advice.
However, a technical check revealed that the account was registered through an anonymous proxy server, and this was confirmed using a temporary phone number purchased on the market in the Alcarama district.
According to the testimony of Leah’s roommate, the girl left several times for the weekend with a man from the crypto business.
Her friend said that she did not share any details, but mentioned plans for the future, a trip to Abu Dhabi, and a long-term relationship.
2 days before her disappearance, Leah rented a car in her name, a white Audi A6 sedan.
Hotel cameras in the Jira Beach area recorded the vehicle on September 20th, the day after her presumed date of death.
The driver was a man wearing sunglasses and a dark beard.
The police gained access to the United Arab Emirates border crossing registration system.
No one named Khaled Aman had left the country in the last 3 months.
However, one of the temporary mobile phones used by the suspect was detected on the evening of September 19th in the area of the Aljubil International Bus Station from where daily buses depart for Omen, Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The police established that an intercity bus had left the terminal that evening bound for the border with Oman.
There were no internal video recordings in the bus.
The search operation was expanded.
Notices of the suspect’s search were sent to the border services of all six Emirates as well as to the International Police Cooperation Department.
However, as of the end of September, no land or air border crossing point had confirmed the departure of a man matching the description of the figure captured on the residential complex’s cameras.
At the same time, analysis of Leah’s digital devices yielded new results.
A file with an incomplete visa application for Turkey was found on her laptop.
The contact person in the country field of the application form contained an email address linked to an account in the name of Abdul Rahman Busel.
This fact became a turning point.
On September 27th, a fingerprint matching the one taken from the plastic tie at the crime scene was found in the European fingerprint database.
The match identified the man as Abdul Rahman Busel, 41, a French citizen originally from Yemen, previously convicted in Marseilles for sexual offenses against a minor.
At that point, the investigation had no legal grounds to assert that Khaled Akman and Abdul Rahman Busel were the same person.
However, the links between them became increasingly apparent.
Their accounts, email addresses, communication style, and behavior patterns were identical.
Information emerged that Busousel had previously used more than three fake identities, posing as an investor, entrepreneur, and even a surgeon.
The police began verifying this information and interviewing possible victims who had previously been in contact with his accounts.
One such case was reported in January in Abu Dhabi.
A woman from India reported that her friend had disappeared after communicating with a crypto investor.
The case was not pursued because the victim had left the country.
Investigators have now linked this case to Leah’s case.
Abdul Rahman Busale remained at large.
His whereabouts were unknown.
An international arrest warrant was prepared but has not yet been signed.
Investigators feared that the man had already left the country under a new name.
Confirmation that a fingerprint found on a plastic tie matched the fingerprint of French citizen Abdul Rahman Busousale was a key turning point in the investigation.
On September 29th, 2022, French investigative authorities officially confirmed that the fingerprint belonged to a man previously convicted in Marseilles.
In January 2015, he was sentenced to four years in prison for sexual assault of a minor.
After his release in 2019, he changed his name and legally obtained new documents under the pretext of changing his religion and refugee status.
From that moment on, his traces began to disappear from public databases.
Just a few months after his release, he crossed the Spanish border from where he took a ferry to Tangier and then a plane to the United Arab Emirates.
There he arrived on documents in the name of Muhammad Alfad, a Yemeni citizen using a passport with a diplomatic cover.
To date, the origin of this document remains unknown.
None of the countries listed in his biographical data have confirmed that they issued the original passport.
This indicates that the suspect had access to organized channels for the production of forged documents.
Investigators in the Emirates have begun verifying all rental properties in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharah and Ras Alka over the past 2 years under similar names Khaled Aman, Muhammad Alfad and Rashid Bakar.
In all cases, the leases were short-term ranging from 2 to 5 weeks.
The apartments were rented based on electronic copies of passports which as it later turned out contained similar data but different photographs.
In this way, the suspect regularly updated his documents avoiding digital identification.
Interpol joined the investigation on October 1st.
Requests were sent through partner channels to Turkey, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia.
Priority was given to countries where recent airline ticket purchases using similar surnames had been recorded.
In one case, the system returned a match.
On September 20th, a man named Rashid Bakar was registered at Muscat airport, Sultanate of Oman, and flew to Thran.
However, by the time the information was received, more than 10 days had passed and no confirmation of further movement had been received.
Meanwhile, analysis of the contents of Leah Harper’s phone revealed another name, Jamil Saudi.
This name appeared in a conversation in which Khaled mentioned a business partner and asked not to ask unnecessary questions.
A check established that Jamil Saudi is a real person, a Jordanian citizen residing in Dubai who had previously been prosecuted for moneyaundering.
During questioning, he denied knowing Leah Harper and claimed that he did not know anyone named Khaled Akman.
However, encrypted chats were found on his phone, some of which were decrypted.
The correspondence used codes, but mentioned a third object, a British woman, and a sixth floor.
At this stage, it became clear that Abdul Rahman Busale was not acting alone.
He was probably part of an informal network specializing in fraud, blackmail, and violent crimes involving women, mainly international students visiting the Emirates.
According to witnesses, the suspect’s behavior was always extremely controlled.
At a fitness club in Dubai, he introduced himself as Dr.
Akman.
He hired a personal trainer, presenting a medical certificate issued by Cairo University.
The certificate was confirmed to be fake two weeks later.
None of the faculty members knew him.
In addition, he regularly appeared at a hotel restaurant in the Jira area with various women, most of whom were foreigners.
The staff remembered him by his accent and appearance, but they did not know his real name or origin.
One of the servers reported that on the day before Leah’s disappearance, he saw a man resembling Khaled in the company of a woman matching Harper’s description.
This happened on the evening of September 16th.
According to the witness, the couple behaved calmly, but the man insisted that the bill be paid in cash.
30 minutes later, they left the restaurant, got into a white Audi, and drove away.
Investigators reconstructed Leah’s approximate route.
She first left her dormatory in the Albaria area, then headed to the restaurant and then toward Sharah.
The last signal from her phone was recorded in the region covering Alwata Street at 7:40 p.
m.
15 minutes later, the device was turned off.
On September 20th, 4 days after the murder, the suspect left the apartment with a backpack and disappeared.
He was not seen anywhere else.
Not on surveillance cameras in stores, not in residential areas, not in hotels.
Everything pointed to a premeditated escape route and a wellplanned scheme.
No items indicating that a man had been living in the apartment for a long time were found at the scene of the murder.
All groceries had been purchased the day before Leah’s death, and no personal belongings were found.
Even fingerprints, except for one on the tie, had been carefully wiped away.
Leah’s belongings had not been stolen.
Her phone, documents, bank cards, and cosmetics were neatly placed in the corner of the kitchen in her bag.
This indicated that robbery was not the motive.
The investigation leaned toward the theory that the murder was related to the suspect’s controlling, manipulative, and sadistic tendencies.
However, without the arrest and interrogation of the suspect, it was impossible to confirm this officially.
According to the official reconstruction compiled by the investigation department of the Sharah Criminal Investigation Department, the murder of Leah Harper took place between the evening hours of September 16th and the early morning hours of September 17th, 2022.
The last signal from her mobile device was recorded at 7:40 p.
m.
on September 16th in the coverage area of Alwata Street, just 1 and a half km from the apartment where her body was later found.
After that, all attempts to connect to the phone were unsuccessful.
CCTV footage from cameras at the entrance to the building shows Leah entering the building accompanied by a man.
She is wearing a dark shirt and light colored jeans with a small bag on her shoulder.
The man wearing a light gray shirt is carrying a bag of groceries.
The camera captures them taking the elevator to the sixth floor at 8:03 p.
m.
After that, the girl did not leave the building.
A forensic examination established that the cause of death was suffocation, followed by respiratory failure.
Traces of overheating and chemical burns were found on Leah’s skin, inflicted locally on the chest, arms, and thighs.
Experts concluded that the injuries were inflicted several hours before death, indicating prolonged exposure.
In addition, there were deep marks on the victim’s wrists from plastic ties similar to those found in the apartment.
There were no signs of a struggle or panic in the room.
All items were in their places.
The dishes were washed and the bed was made.
However, traces of blood invisible to the naked eye were found on the kitchen tiles near the radiator to which Leo was tied.
Forensic experts determined that the killer had cleaned most of the traces using household chemicals and rags.
However, some of the traces were identified using luminol.
Based on the nature of the stains, investigators concluded that the girl was conscious during the last minutes of her life.
After the murder, Leah’s body was not hidden.
It remained tied to the radiator in the kitchen area, covered with a light blanket.
Nearby were food remains, empty medicine packages, and two disposable syringes containing no biological traces.
The killer left the apartment 3 days later on September 19th.
A video recording from the elevator showed him leaving the apartment alone with a backpack wearing new clothes.
20 minutes later, he was recorded by two more cameras at the exit of the building and at a bus stop.
A plastic tie removed from Leah’s body on which a fingerprint belonging to Abdul Rahman Busale was found became critical evidence.
In addition, a fragment of medical documentation issued by a clinic in Ajan in the name of Muhammad Alfadel was found inside the apartment.
This document also turned out to be fake.
Still, it used the same number structure as other forms appearing in similar cases.
Thus, the investigation was able to link several episodes.
An international arrest warrant was issued on October 5th, 2022.
The French investigative committee confirmed Abdul Rahman Busousale’s involvement in criminal schemes between 2015 and 2019, including the use of fake passports and participation in personal data trafficking networks.
However, despite active international searches, his whereabouts remain unknown.
He is currently listed in Interpol databases as a particularly dangerous fugitive capable of violence and using complex identity concealment schemes.
The trial of Leah Harper was held in absentia.
On December 12th, 2023, the criminal court of the Emirate of Sharah officially found Abdul Rahman Bousal guilty of murder committed with particular cruelty.
The court sentenced him to life imprisonment.
However, the court ruled that the sentence would only begin after the convicted man was actually apprehended.
In addition, arrest warrants were issued for all alleged accompllices whose names appeared in the encrypted correspondence.
Leah Harper’s family was present at the sentencing.
The victim’s mother, Sarah Harper, made a brief statement thanking the UAE police for their work, but calling on the international community to strengthen control over social media, where she said, “A psychopath was able to hunt girls with impunity.
” The case has caused widespread public outrage in the UK.
Several publications have reported on the lack of control over digital platforms and the absence of mechanisms for quick identity verification on international services.
Leah Harper was buried in Birmingham.
A plaque on her grave reads, “She trusted the world and was betrayed.
” Abdul Rahman Busale remains at large.
According to Interpol, he may be hiding in one of the countries of Southeast Asia using another false identity.
The investigation is ongoing.
