All you human rights people better get ready to ‘Occupy Qatar’ since it seems that slapping women is no problem in the oil-rich Arab Emirate. Omar Sharif, the 1960’s screen legend was making an appearance at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in Qatar when the incident, which was caught on film, happened.
As he posed with one woman, another remained a little too persistent in trying to pose with him, causing him to react angrily and violently. Though the view is obscured by the back of her head, Omar raises his hand and seems to strike the woman in the face.
According to a translation, he then tells the woman: ‘My dear! I told you I’d get to you afterwards! I just said that and you’re standing here. Put something in your brain!’
Sharif has a history of sudden and violent physical exchanges with strangers.
In August 2003 Sharif was convicted in Paris of attacking a policeman after reportedly losing $30,000 in a single bet at a casino.
The ‘Dr Zhivago’ actor allegedly head-butted the officer after he was asked to leave a casino.
A fight broke out between Sharif and a croupier on 5 July, 2003 while he was playing roulette at the Enghien-les-Bains casino in a Parisian suburb, the French newspaper Le Parisien reported.
Sharif later received a one-month suspended sentence and a $2000 fine for “violence towards a police officer” at Pontoise criminal court.
And, in February 2007 he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery charges in Beverly Hills, California, and was ordered to take an anger management class after brawling with a parking attendant in Beverly Hills.
Sharif has said publicly that the East will never have a democracy because people like him prefer to go to the neighborhood chief. In the interview, Sharif reportedly blasted U.S. policy in Iraq and said Americans are ‘ignorant.’ I don;t know about you but it is Omar Shariff who appears ‘ignorant’ to me.